


Eden

by infamouslastwords



Series: Poison Arrow [3]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Animal Death, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Daryl Dixon-centric, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes Feels, Explicit Sexual Content, Farmer Rick Grimes, Gay Daryl Dixon, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Pre-Season/Series 04, Prison (Walking Dead), Rick Grimes Loses His Mind, Slow Burn, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28551855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infamouslastwords/pseuds/infamouslastwords
Summary: “Daryl, this is simply humanity, at its core. We teach each other one of the many words for things that have been inside of us, all along, if we were only to listen closely enough—allow ourselves to feel.”Daryl responds by tightening his grip on the fig tree, pulling the pot closer to him. He knows his eyes betray his mind, now, settled in some ways that needed settling, but unsettled in other, new ways. As if in response to this, Dr. S looks to him.“One is made by belief,” the other man quotes, his dark eyes depthless. “As one believes, so one is.”Daryl-centric Rickyl fic covering the summer between Seasons 3 and 4. Peace, light angst, Daryl interacting with canon characters, and acknowledged feelings Daryl/Rick slow burn.
Relationships: Beth Greene/Zach (Walking Dead), Daryl Dixon & Beth Greene, Daryl Dixon & Caleb Subramanian, Daryl Dixon & Carol Peletier, Daryl Dixon & Hershel Greene, Daryl Dixon & Michonne, Daryl Dixon & Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon & Zach, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Series: Poison Arrow [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031406
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	1. The Council

“It looks like it’s alone. Is it alone?”

Michonne gazes steadily through the camo-colored binoculars, then hands them to Daryl. They are both hidden behind a hedge, low to the ground, hearing the occasional squawking from the single, darkly iridescent-plumed, feral chicken.

“Can’t tell,” she admits.

Daryl lifts the binoculars to his eyes, finding that red crown of cartilage as it bends to peck at the ground.

“Looks like it,” he says. “Dammit,” he curses, voice a hiss. “Would’ve been hard as hell to catch ‘em, not to mention keepin’ ‘em penned up. But can you imagine, havin’ chickens?”

Michonne smiles widely, doing exactly that. “Would be amazing,” she breathes back. “Fresh eggs? A roast every once in a while? And chicken wings?” She looks like she might float off. “Jesus.”

“Well,” Daryl starts, beginning to gather his bow. “Might as well eat the one we got.”

Michonne smirks, pats him on the shoulder. “Attaboy,” she cheers, quietly, as Daryl stalks off to capture their quarry.

…

Later, around a campfire Michonne has built, Daryl plucks the black-rainbow feathers from the deceased bird. Its plumage is thick, insulating, and Daryl thinks that it is a shame to leave such beautiful feathers to be crushed underfoot, into the dirt.

Their SUV’s trunk is bursting with ransacked goods—all kinds of summer clothing, blankets, and boots that they had managed to stumble upon within an off-the-beaten-track strip mall. It also contained a knife store, and Daryl thought he had died and somehow gotten to heaven.

Michonne stokes the fire with a long twig once Daryl has laid the bird on a metal grate over top, pushing some more stubborn logs toward the middle, hoping they will catch and quicken the cooking time. It is just then when a man approaches through the nearby thicket, his hands held high.

“Help,” he begins. “I mean no harm.” But Michonne and Daryl know better. They are immediately on their feet. Michonne arrests the man against the ground, and Daryl keeps a lookout for others. Then, in the bushes, he spots them—yelling that they need to come out lest he shoot. They obey: It is a woman and a boy.

“What is this?” Daryl calls out, terse. “What d’you want?”

“Please,” the man begins, voice muffled by the dirt that Michonne is pushing him into. “We are unarmed. We need help.”

“Why?” Daryl bites. He cows the woman and boy against a thicket. They are trapped by the thorny brambles and the threat of his sharp arrow.

“Our group—” the man manages. “Those things—We have been running—”

Daryl and Michonne meet eyes, knowing.

“They get them?” Daryl asks. “They bitten?”

“Yes,” the woman says tearfully. “Please—”

“How many walkers have you killed?” Michonne interrupts, demands of the man, her voice terse.

“I don’t know,” comes the man’s quick, confused reply. “Many.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“None!” the man exclaims, trying to lay very still despite the frightening nature of the situation, and the painful pressure that Michonne applies to his arm.

“Why?” she hisses, her blade glinting in the light of the fire.

“Because, I am a doctor,” the man pants. “The Hippocratic oath forbids it.”

“These two ain’t doctors, are they?” Daryl calls. He regards the woman. “How many people you kill?”

She shakes her head, eyes wide. “No one, believe me,” she says hurriedly. “I am not a doctor, but my gods— _har mahadev aarti_ —forbid it, as well!” She is pulling at a beaded rope wrapped around her wrist, hands almost thrown out in supplication. “And our boy is an innocent, please. He is too young.”

At this, Daryl backs off. He lowers his bow at the same time that Michonne lets the man up, sheathing her sword. She throws a hand down to help him up off the ground, warily watching.

“What’s your name?” Daryl asks gruffly, addressing the boy. He cannot be more than twelve years old, looking up from under a fringe of thick black hair.

“Inesh,” he whispers.

“What your mom said true, Inesh?” Daryl asks.

The boy nods slowly. Daryl looks from him to the woman, and over his shoulder at Michonne and the man. He nods at her, and she nods back.

“We have a place,” Michonne begins. “Twenty-five people, at a prison. It’s secure. We have food, protection, and a community. You can come back with us,” she continues, “if you want.”

The family is guardedly overjoyed, relieved.

“Even got some chicken, now, if y’all want,” Daryl tells them, stepping back to allow their reunion. They ignore him, rushing one another with a hug, a beautiful mess of limbs and tears.

After this brief jubilation, the man quickly comes over to Michonne and grasps her hand with both of his. “Thank you,” he says, looking up into her eyes. He comes to Daryl, repeats the same motion. “You have answered my wife’s prayers.”

“What’re your names?” Michonne asks as they move to sit back around the fire.

The woman responds. “I am Falak. This is my husband, Atiksh.”

"You can call me Caleb,” the man says. “Or Dr. S, as my patients once did.”

“What’s your specialty, Dr. S?” Michonne asks.

“I am an internist,” the man replies. “My wife is also a type of internist.”

“Thought you said you weren’t a doctor,” Daryl says to Falak. She laughs.

“Atiksh loves telling this joke,” she replies, waving her slim brown hand. “No. I am a chef.”

Michonne smiles, letting out a small chuckle. Her laughter only increases when she sees that Daryl does not understand.

“How long you been out here?” Daryl asks, changing the subject.

“Since the beginning,” Dr. S replies. Inesh is curled up against his mother, silently watching the chicken roasting on the flames.

Michonne sees this, too. “Are y’all hungry? I think the bird is cooked through.”

Falak meets her husband’s eyes. “We’re very thankful,” she starts, “but because of our beliefs, we do not eat meat.”

Daryl and Michonne throw one another a glance. They know they do not have anything suitable for such a diet.

Daryl clears his throat. “I can forage,” he says. “There’s light enough.”

The sun is approaching the edge of the horizon, due to set in about an hour. He begins to draw himself up, collecting his bow and knife.

“I’ll come with you,” Dr. S volunteers.

“Alright,” Daryl agrees, shooting a look at Michonne and waiting to see her allowing nod.

“You know anything about collectin’ wild food?” Daryl asks as they set off. Dr. S shakes his head.

“Sadly, no. It is a skill that I envy, considering my family and I have been surviving on packaged foods and peanut butter.” He looks at Daryl, dark eyes taking him in. “I know some medicinal plants, however. My mother, she taught me things like this.”

“Really?” Daryl says as they enter the edge of the forest. He picks his feet up, throwing a look at the other man. “Anythin’ that grows around here?”

Dr. S thinks for a moment, his brow knit. “Yes, I believe so. Plantain, bright green with a dark pink stem, and the leaves like this—” The man makes a motion with his hands, spreading all his fingers apart in a circle from where his wrists meet one another. “It is from India, through England.”

“What’s it do?” Daryl asks.

“A powerful coagulant, and a pretty good antiseptic,” Dr. S responds. “Makes healing poultices. Also, a tea for coughs and similar lung ailments.”

Daryl regards the other man with some satisfaction. “Didn’t know about that one. Thanks,” he says. “Y’know, I can teach you about foragin’, if you let me know about other plants like that one, that plantain.” Dr. S is meeting his gaze. “Sound good?”

The other man nods. “Yes. It does.”

Daryl reaches his hand out. Dr. S smiles, taking it into his own. They shake.

“We got’a deal, then,” Daryl says, returning the smile.

By sunset, they have found enough roughage to ensure that the Subramanians are able to fill their bellies for the night. When the two men return to camp, Daryl notices that Michonne has pulled the chicken from the fire, though has not yet partaken in it. He shoots her a glance, and she shrugs with a small smile.

Eventually, their new wards hole up in a large blanket they had managed to find, on the far edge of the firelight’s reach, exhausted by their day long flight from danger.

He and Michonne eat in relative silence, both ravenously hungry. Some minutes pass in the dark before either one looks to the other.

“I wanted to clear the air,” Michonne begins in her familiar, measured tone. Daryl slowly lowers a bone from his mouth, licking his last three fingertips clean after swallowing.

“Yeah?” he ventures. “What ‘bout?”

“Rick.”

Daryl had not been expecting this. He watches Michonne throw her scraps into the fire, sees the flames dance in her big, dark eyes.

“You know what I’m about to say?”

Daryl clears his throat. “Not really, no.”

Her voice is smooth and rich. “You don’t like it when I’m near him. I thought I was making it up at first, but. You’re in your feelings. And, hey,” Michonne starts, throwing her hands up, “that’s fine. I understand that, trust me. But it’s going to start affecting me and you, and I don’t like that.”

A saturated pause passes between them. When Daryl raises his eyes, Michonne is staring at him from the other side of the fire. She doesn’t seem to blink.

“So, how can we fix that?”

Daryl clears his throat again. He likes to hear her speak, likes the way she finds it so easy to word things, tempered always by her habitual fairness. “Ain’t nothin’ needs fixin’.” He gives her a long look before bringing his forgotten food back to his teeth, biting the last bit of flesh off the bone. “Not that you need my permission or nothin’, but if you’re interested in him, go for it, sister. I’d be happy for ya.”

Michonne’s eyes narrow slightly, trying to figure out if Daryl is lying to her. It is a difficult task for anyone. She readjusts her place on the half-rotted log she leans against. “Is that so?”

Daryl shrugs. He opens the cap of his canteen and takes a swig, letting some cool water run down his jawbone and over the arc of his throat.

“Nothing happened, then…?”

“Why would it?” Daryl replies opaquely, wiping his lips on the back of his hand before capping the canteen and tossing it down to the dirt. He feels sort of grimy not being an open book for the woman who is, in turn, being so open with him. But he feels that it isn’t his place to say—isn’t like him to tell tales out of school. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Michonne echoes. “Even if he felt some type of way about me… That man is special. And that is not something I can handle right now.”

“Why not?”

Michonne’s gaze goes cloudy across the bonfire. “My boyfriend. My son. My family, from before.” She meets Daryl’s eyes. “It isn’t over for me. Not yet.”

Daryl nods at this, a meaningful gesture. Michonne nods back. He decides on something, removing himself silently from the fire side to go digging around in a loot pack from earlier. Eventually he withdraws his hand, returns, and rolls a bottle across the dirt floor of their camp. As he settles back into his place by the fire, the bottle bumps into Michonne’s boot, and she leans forward to pick it up.

“Heard you liked this kind,” Daryl says. “Was gonna save it for your birthday next week, but now seems a’good a’time.”

Michonne reads the label of the wine bottle, her mouth cracking into a smile. She looks up at him.

"You know, I didn’t care for you much when I first met you, Daryl. But you’re alright.”

Daryl snorts. “That’s some high praise, comin’ from you.”

Michonne laughs lightly. She cracks the seal of the cap, bringing the bottle of wine to her lips before standing to come sit closer to Daryl, be able to pass the bottle between the two of them. Daryl takes it and tilts some back, letting the liquid warm his throat, his chest.

“I’m serious, though,” Michonne says, her voice anything but—elated by their good fortune and the successful day. “You’re my friend, Daryl. This,” she says, tilting the bottle in her hand, “just goes to show it. You’re not one for a big show but you get it. It’s nice, your way of being.” She takes a swig, swallows, and softens. “I can see why he cares about you so much.”

Daryl grasps the bottle offered to him, but does not immediately drink. He holds it in his palm for a moment, staring into the fire.

“I see why he cares about you.”

Michonne meets his gaze, searching his eyes. She is satisfied with this half-answer, this half-admission. Daryl eventually returns his gaze to the fire, passing the bottle back to Michonne without drinking.

They stay up for quite some time, chatting and laughing in low tones as to not wake the new wards. Daryl throws his gaze to them from time to time, just a lump of blankets in the shadows of the slowly dying fire. He thinks about relief and belonging. He thinks about strangers and friends.

“Anyway,” Michonne eventually says, giving a long cat-like stretch from her seated position. “Thanks for dinner, Daryl, and the wine. I should go to bed, if you’re okay taking first watch.”

“Yeah.”

Michonne gathers her shawl in her arms, lifting herself from the dirt. Daryl begins to ready himself for watch, drawing his crossbow across his back and checking that his sheaths are full. On the edge of the campfire, Michonne pauses, turning back to face Daryl.

“You sure there isn’t anything to fix?”

Daryl coughs as a whiff of smoke blows in his face. He is throwing clods of dirt onto the fire to extinguish it. “Mm-hmm,” he replies. “I’m sure.”

He means it, but he does not look up to meet her eyes.

“I’m heading to Senoia, next,” Michonne tells him as they pack up the car in the morning. The Subramanians are putting what little they have in their own bags, and nestling them alongside his and Michonne’s in the trunk of the SUV. “Probably as soon as we’re back.”

“You want company?” Daryl asks. He knows that this has been a low-grade fever in her since the early spring—finding the Governor. She wants to be the one to do it.

Michonne shakes her head. “Nah,” she says. “I feel like going at it alone for a while.” She wrestles with a particularly lumpy loot bag, finally settling it into place. “Got a lot to think about.”

Daryl nods. He waits until she is finished before lowering the trunk hatch back into place. He catches the keys that she tosses to him, giving him a small smile. He lifts the corner of his mouth up in return.

…

“So, not a zookeeper?”

Daryl snorts over Beth’s light laughter. He regards Zach with some perplexity from where he leans in the yard, his back against the brick wall of a set of stairs. The two teenagers are sitting on the ledge behind him, their feet dangling down to the right of his shoulder.

“No, man,” he deadpans. “How’d you get there?”

Zach shrugs. “All the animals. I dunno.”

“All the animals I eat?” Daryl asks. “Makes for a pretty shitty zookeep.”

“Don’t wanna get high on your own supply,” Beth giggles. “Didn’t they learn you that in that fancy public school you went to?”

Zach just sighs, throwing up his hands. “Like you can do any better, homeschooler,” he quips. “You never guess with me. If we both did once a day, it’d take half as long to figure this guy out.”

Daryl doesn’t mind being a jokey pastime for the teens. He finds some light amusement in it, some welcome distraction. Also, it is interesting to see how others perceive him, as that is a topic with which he rarely concerns himself.

Maggie is coming out of the door behind them, calling out.

“Zach, can you come help me with the Subramanians?” she asks. “I’m gettin’ their son set up, and he needs a guy to show him the ropes.”

Zach gives Beth a quick peck on the cheek before swinging his legs over the ledge. “Later,” he says, following Maggie back inside.

Beth watches the boy go, and Daryl turns his gaze out over the yard. Rick has been building a small stable to accompany the pig pen, as Daryl has spotted now-wild horses from time to time on his runs. He’s confident that a day will come in which one will let him get close enough. Any livestock would be a blessing—but, for now, the six piglets seem to make him happy enough.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Beth starts from behind him. Daryl nods.

“What?”

“Well,” Beth begins. She is hesitant about what she is going to say. Daryl can hear the slightly awkward strain in her voice. “It’s just, me and Zach, we’ve been talkin’ about—” She pauses for a long moment. “We wanna have sex, soon.”

“What?” Daryl repeats, and he is not proud to hear that his voice comes out in a near-squawk.

Beth continues like he had not reacted, probably wanting to get it all out before her nerves fail her. “But I don’t know, exactly, how to go about it. I don’t wanna be unprepared.” She gives him a hard look when he doesn’t respond, daring. “Well?”

Daryl balks. “Don’t you wanna talk to Maggie about all this? Or your father?”

Beth laughs sharply. “I can’t talk to Daddy about it! Are you crazy? He’d strangle him, or lock him in solitary.” She readjusts her seating on the ledge. “Besides, I wanted a guy’s opinion. Maggie’d just talk about how it is with Glenn, and I don’t really wanna know that. Or she’d tell me to ask him.” She screws up her face with a mild look of disgust. “He’s my brother-in-law, and I love him, but we don’t talk about stuff like that. You and me are closer.”

Daryl can’t help but feel his heart warm at this admission. He begins to calm down, the initial shock of hearing Beth ask this of him wearing off.

“So, you really like this Zach guy, huh?”

Beth just shrugs. “Yeah, he’s nice to me. Its more that, y’know, I’m sixteen and haven’t done much outside of killin’ walkers these days.” A wistful look crosses her brow. “Maybe it’s Judith, or seein’ Maggie with Glenn, but… I always wanted that. A husband, and babies.”

Daryl clears his throat, shooting Beth a dubious glance. “You’re aimin’ to… make babies with Zach?” His voice betrays how uncomfortable he is, and Beth goes wide-eyed before letting out another laugh. This one is long and melodic.

“Of course not,” she exclaims. “I’m just talkin’ about… someday.” She looks back at him, smirking proudly. “I just wanna have a little prepared fun, first.”

Daryl snorts. He bumps his shoulder gently into her knee hanging beside him, approving. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” he says. They share an easy silence for a few minutes, looking over the yard and the fields. Daryl sees Rick at the edge, hammering away at the half-constructed stable. His hair and beard, though not visible from this distance, are longer, and Daryl thinks about a good Jesus the carpenter joke to jab at him with, later on.

“Do you even like girls, Daryl?”

Beth’s voice is soft. He brings his gaze away from Rick, placing it on her curious, open expression. He readjusts his arms where they are crossed against his chest.

“Sure,” he says, easily. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Not like that,” Beth persists. “You know what I mean.”

Daryl chews at his cheek. He blinks his gaze away from her. “I tried to, when I was young,” he admits. “But, no.”

Beth does not say anything for a long moment. Then she is hopping down from the ledge, and quickly wrapping her arms around Daryl in a hug. Her blond head fits just under his chin, and she is only a wisp against him, but robust in her affection. He chuckles smally, bringing one arm around her to squeeze briefly. Then he takes her by the shoulder and moves her an arm’s length away.

“Enough’a that,” he says gruffly. “We’ll talk later, if you want, okay? Go see if your sister and boyfriend need help with anythin’ for now.”

Beth smiles at him. “Thanks, Daryl.”

“Alright, kid. Get gone.”

She laughs, pivoting to walk up the steps and back into the shadow of the prison.

…

They have designated a room in the prison for meetings. _The inner circle_ , Merle would snigger. Daryl sits down in one of several chairs around a large table, right next to Hershel, who is preparing a fountain pen. He watches the ostentatiousness of this process with a wary eye, which, of course, Hershel picks up on immediately.

“Got somethin’ to say about my pen, young man?” Hershel asks. Daryl has to suppress a laugh.

“You’re nuts, old man,” is all he can manage. Hershel gives a good-humored chuckle, capping the pen after he has soaked it in his ink well for a suitable amount of time.

“Yes, that may be true,” Hershel demurs. “But important events call for important instruments.”

“We have these all the time, seems like,” Daryl rebuts. “Not really special, no more.”

He and Hershel chat absently as the rest of the group wanders in. Sasha and Maggie, Glenn, Tyreese. Eventually Rick opens the cell door, shutting it behind him, a rather official air about his movements toward the head of the table.

“What’s in your book?” Daryl asks Hershel after a moment. Hershel lifts his head from where he had been writing, focused on the three-by-five pocket notebook, and locks his gaze on Daryl.

“History,” the older man says with a gravity so heavy that Daryl just sits back in his chair. _Battle_ , the word comes to him through time, the weeks passed. He knows that Hershel is picking up where Milton Mamet had left off.

As Hershel turns back to his notebook, Daryl lights his gaze on Rick at the head of the table, who is conversing in low tones with Tyreese. They share some easy gestures between them, and Daryl wonders what they are talking about. When Carol enters through the cell door, she gives Daryl a small smile and comes to sit in the empty seat beside him.

“Alright, I think we’re all here now,” Rick begins, clearing his throat, “with the absence of Michonne, who is on her way to Senoia, looking for Philip Blake.”

Dark shadows pass over Sasha and Tyreese’s features. They are equally, if not more, invested in the Governor’s capture.

“With that, we call into order the eleventh meetin’ of the Council—or whatever officious shit Hershel wants me to call it, now.”

This gets a laugh out of everyone, including Hershel.

“Anyway,” Rick continues. “We should talk first about food. The Subramanians bring our headcount to twenty-eight, which means that we need to be upping our planting, scavenging, and supply runs. Now, it’s a little past seeding season,” Rick says, with a nod at Hershel. “But the rains have been good lately, and if we find anything here soon, it should fare just fine out in the fields. I’ve got the cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn sprouting up nicely already. Those, and the piglets Daryl’s found for us,” Rick’s eyes fall to him, and he nods, “are fattening up just fine, too. You’ve all probably heard them squealing healthily late into the night. Thank him for whatever sleep you’ve lost ‘cause’a that.”

Another round of laughter. Carol’s bright face turns to him, and she rubs her hand comfortingly against his forearm. Rick smiles smartly at him, and the corner of Daryl’s mouth turns up.

“The things we’re needing most are, as always, bullets and other arms accessories—that means cleaning kits, holsters, straps, oil, and cotton. Don’t matter if it’s the ugliest piece of clothin’ you’ve seen in your life—if it’s a hundred percent cotton, and clean, we can use it. And not just for munitions, but for first aid, too. And that brings us to the second item—which is, you guessed it, first aid.” A few smiles crop up amongst the group. “Dr. Subramanian has a lead on a pharmacy, but it’s at least a two-day trip out, four days total. He's already volunteered, but we should put two more people on it. Any takers?”

Daryl clears his throat. “I’ll go.” He looks at Carol, who nods at him, before moving his eyes to Rick’s. The other man’s lips tighten, just enough for Daryl to notice, before he nods.

“Me, too,” Carol says. “Mrs. Subramanian’s a trained chef. You can start enjoying her fare over my crappy casseroles, as soon as tomorrow.”

“If those are crap, I’d love to see what you think good is,” Tyreese jokes from across the table. “You make some Michelin star stuff out of nothin’, Carol.”

Carol demurs, pleased.

“Alright, that’s taken care of,” Rick continues after a beat. “Any other business needs discussin’?”

“The showers,” Maggie says. “I’d like to start converting them to be more discreet. Ms. Evers is requestin’ some _privacy_ in the women’s bath.”

Sasha looks at her and they share a knowing, irritated smile. Bertie Evers, a ward from Woodbury, is infamously touchy when it comes to having her own space.

“So, things like fishing line, cable, and shower curtains. Any kind of curtain might work, but they’ll last longer and require less upkeep if we get them waterproofed somehow.”

“If anyone finds tarps, Daryl and I can fashion them into something useful,” Carol chimes in. “Will probably need some heavier duty needles, the hooked kind, but we could get it done.”

“That sounds great,” Maggie says. “Oh, and small buckets and caddies, too. We gave all the toiletry buckets to Rick and Daryl for the medicinal herb planters, so people have been dropping shampoo left and right on their way to the showers. It’s gettin’ to be a pain to clean up, not to mention wasteful.”

“Got all’a that, Hershel?” Rick asks the older man. Hershel doesn’t look up from his scribblings, vocalizing a soft grunt of affirmation.

“Anythin’ else?”

…

“You didn’t have to volunteer for another run, so soon. It feels like you’re always gone.”

Rick is sitting on his mattress, bending to remove his boots. Daryl leans against the concrete jamb, just inside the privacy curtain, his arms crossed over his chest, observing the man who is so different now, when it is just him, and not a room full of other people to organize.

“It’s fine. I like bein’ out there.”

A slight look of frustration knits Rick’s features. His boots off, he stands to undo his gun belt, then his pants belt.

“Aren’t you tired?” Rick asks. He flicks open the button on his jeans, zipping his fly down, before pulling the denim sheaths off over each sock-covered heel, each calve. Shaking them off against the concrete floor, he turns, digging a hand through some laundry on the top bunk. He brings his ‘barn clothes’ down.

“Nah,” Daryl replies. “Besides, we need things. More people means more things.”

Rick sighs, zipping up the light wash, dirt- and grass-stained, frayed Levi’s. He bends to recollect his belt, leaving the gun belt hanging next to his bed.

“I know what it means. I’m just sayin’, it’s okay to let other people handle things for a day or two. More people also means more hands that can work.”

Daryl stares at the other man for a long moment. “Why don’t you care this much about Michonne bein’ gone?”

Rick sits back on his bed, treating his limbs like they are unreasonably heavy. He sighs again.

“Daryl, I give her a hard enough time about bein’ gone so much, alright? But you know her. She calls the shots.”

Daryl frowns. “But you don’t want me havin’ that luxury, or what?”

Rick runs a hand through his hair, turning his face up to Daryl’s. “I like knowin’ where you are at night. Gives me one less thing to worry about.”

This doesn’t do anything to assuage Daryl’s irritation. “I ain’t no damn bird in a cage, man. You can let me out. I’m smart enough to find my way home in one piece.”

Rick just sets his jaw. Daryl knows the other man is close to the end of this conversation—but he isn’t done, and he doesn’t know how to settle his heart, beating erratically in his chest.

“I don’t wanna argue with you, okay? You care about Michonne and she’s able to come and go. Show me some’a that same leniency, and we’ll be square.”

Rick stares up at Daryl from his mattress, almost daring. He has that familiar look of stubborn confusion on his face, reacting from the gut.

“You think she’s more important than you?”

Daryl only shrugs in response. “She’s obviously somethin’ to you.”

Rick turns away. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

“I’m just sayin’, Rick,” Daryl relents. “I think you know what I’m sayin’.”

Rick puts his palm flatly on Daryl’s stomach, a solid gesture that makes Daryl snap his mouth shut. The other man’s hand lingers there, their eyes locking. Rick’s eyes are tired, ringed in navy blue just below the olive skin.

“But you don’t gotta say it, do you? Just yet.”

Daryl swallows. “No. I guess I don’t.”

Rick nods, his eyes lingering on Daryl’s. “Okay.”

Daryl nods back. Rick’s hand is still splaying its fingers out above his abdomen, that thumb worrying lightly above his naval.

“Rick,” Daryl breathes. His weak will crumbles in on itself, and Daryl has to close his eyes to hold himself back. He has to grit his jaw and block out the slow rhythm of Rick’s thumb against his shirt, his shirt against his skin—focus so that all he hears is his own blood rush through his ears.

“I know,” he thinks he hears Rick whisper. Daryl thinks he perceives that slow admission, those two words that would sustain him, keep him, for at least six more weeks. But he can’t be sure, and he cannot confirm. Daryl blinks slowly, his lashes pulsing against his cheekbones.

When his vision focuses, Rick’s face is turned up to his own, that breath exiting in gentle pants. Rick’s eyes flicker from his eyes to his mouth. Daryl almost doesn’t breathe, acutely aware of how close the other man’s body is in the small space of the cell. Less than an arm’s length, and they would be against one another.

“Rick,” he murmurs again. He dares to bring his palm up to the other’s cheek, ghosts the jawbone there with his thumb, but cannot bring himself to cusp it, grasp it close. He tries to neither impede Rick’s movements nor accelerate them, letting the other man move of his own volition.

Rick’s movement, when it comes, is neither forward nor backward, but into, toward. Rick presses his cheek into Daryl’s warm palm, keeps it pressed there. The mouth there, covered in scratchy hairs from the beard growing, kisses—gently, so gently.

Daryl lets out a hiss, repressing the shiver that runs up his spine.

“This okay?” Rick asks.

Daryl nods. “Mm-hm.”

Rick’s fingers wrap around Daryl’s wrist, bringing the thin skin at the heel of his hand closer to his mouth. Rick kisses again, presses his lips over the blue veins there until a little dot of wetness remains. Then he kisses that, too, moves his mouth over it, inhales sharply, eyes closed.

Daryl swallows hard. He breathes in through parted lips, the tremor that runs through his body making his chest rattle slightly with the inhale. Rick’s palm brushes lightly over his knuckles as he withdraws, softly letting go of Daryl’s hand. Daryl is still standing as the other man’s eyes flicker open and hold his gaze.

Rick says, resolute, “I’m still here. I just need more time.”

“Okay,” Daryl murmurs. Rick’s hand falls from his stomach. “Yeah.”

He stands like this in silence for a moment before Rick’s voice reaches his ears. “You can go with them tomorrow, alright? But be fuckin’ careful, Daryl.”

Daryl has to pull his body away, consciously order his limbs to obey. “Yeah, Rick. Of course.”

Rick looks at him and nods graciously, bringing his hands together as he leans forward, heavily, into the space Daryl occupied just seconds ago. He places his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and is silent.

Daryl takes his eyes from the curve of Rick’s back to turn and pull the curtain away, exiting quietly. Outside, in the cell block, the light from the noon sun is blinding. He tries to face it head on, tries to force himself to acclimate instantaneously to the light, but it feels like glass is caught in his eyes. He rubs a hand over his face. His heartbeat is a steady drum trilling through his temples.

He closes his eyes, tries to welcome the warm, slightly golden darkness of the inside of his eyelids.

Then he stalks off to his cell, preparing for his four-day leave.


	2. The Pharmacy

The morning is a particularly grey one for May. It has been three months since Daryl and Rick wandered ahead of the group through the nearby woods, near-starving and near-desperate, following a set of train tracks over the ridge before happening upon the tall guard tower cresting over the forest canopy. Daryl stands once more on these tracks, alone, his crossbow slung over his shoulder. He watches as prison inhabitants, too far away to be recognizable, set up the pole tent over the breakfast procession outside—expecting rain from the dreary, heavy atmosphere. There is almost another pair of boots beside his feet, almost a familiar drawl meeting his ears. He blinks and lets it keep him company for a moment, wraps himself in it as one would a blanket.

The long-buried railroad tracks are lined on either side by small white lily of the valley blooms, drooping elegantly, and the sharply purple, bifurcated heads of larkspur. The type of luminescent green present during spring, heated slightly into intensity by the oncoming summer sun, colors the scene around him, despite the lack of light in the sky. Everything seems unreal, almost a veil away from another world, teeming with life.

Then comes the slow sound of a voice, or voices, murmuring from not far off. Daryl stalks sideways, making himself silent as he brings his bow from his back. Just between two large red azaleas, in a small clearing, the Subramanians are identically seated with their legs folded and eyes closed. Their hands all form elegant gestures involving the touching of fingertips to the thumb. Daryl watches for a moment, confusion giving way to imbibing the easy peace so palpable, before turning and walking away, leaving them to their practice.

…

“Good morning,” Carol lilts from beside him as he scoops some kind of layered macaroni dish onto his plate. He knows just by the sight of it that it is Carol’s creation—slightly disturbing to look at, yet pleasant to taste.

“Mornin’,” he greets her back. He moves off to the bleachers in the yard, and Carol follows him, picking something up as they pass the cutlery table.

“You forgot this,” she tells him as he moves to scoop some of the mess onto his fingers. She grabs his wrist, putting the fork into his palm.

“Use it,” she tells him. “We’re not on the road anymore. People that don’t love you yet can see you.”

Daryl grumbles, but sticks the fork into some noodles anyway. “You seem like you been up for a while.”

“That’s because I have been,” she responds. “Taking care of Judith. Beth traded me. She wanted the night off.”

Daryl raises an eyebrow but does not say anything. He fills his mouth with food so he does not have to speak.

“You gonna be good for the run?” he asks once he has swallowed. She shrugs.

“Sure. I don’t mind taking first shift driving if it’s okay with you and Caleb.”

“Okay with me. I’ll be on my bike.”

“I thought you’d be with us in the truck.”

Daryl shakes his head. “No chance. Can’t even remember the last time I got to have a long ride. Plus, it’ll be good for me to scout ahead.”

She agrees. Daryl eats in the relative silence of her easy company, enjoying whatever cheese substitute is gluing the macaroni together. He almost cannot taste the canned spinach in it, and thinks Carol must still be in the habit of cooking for a picky child. Either way, it suits him just fine.

“Where is this place, exactly?” Carol asks eventually, bringing the back of her hand over her brow as she watches people filter by the breakfast buffet.

“Tallahassee, I guess. Some Bureau of Public Health pharmacy or somethin’. Dr. S said him and his family came over from St. Augustine and up through there when all this started.”

“So, what… I-85 south, then 27 all the way down?” Carol thinks out loud.

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees. “It’s pretty much a straight shot.”

“Lucky for us,” Carol sighs, and it turns into a massive yawn. “I need more coffee.”

“I’ll get it for ya,” Daryl says, taking the empty cup from her hands before she can protest. On his way to the carafe, he exchanges nods with several of the other newer wards. The back of Sasha’s head is to him, and past her shoulder Bob Stookey raises his eyes. The man gives him a warm smile, at which Sasha turns. Her face opens gently, and she waves.

Daryl finds the carafe already in use upon his arrival. Rick is almost startled, in that nonchalant way of his, to see Daryl at his side. Daryl notices that the man’s eyes are still deeply ringed—had he slept, at all? Or stayed up, pouring over Hershel’s notebook by candlelight, again?

Rick fills his cup, bringing it to his lips. He nods at Daryl as he does this, just the slightest incline of the head. Daryl nods back, just as imperceptibly. Then he sees Rick foremove, a slight tremor through his arm, before it has extended itself subtly to place a hand against Daryl’s stomach. Just for a moment it lingers, Rick’s blue eyes on his, before the other man is lowering the coffee cup from his lips.

“See you,” Rick murmurs, turning as his hand slips away, taking his coffee back across the yard and inside the prison without another look. Daryl watches him go before he realizes there is a line starting to form behind him, and he is holding it up.

“Hello,” an even voice says beside him, a few moments later. Daryl steps away from the carafe, setting his eyes on a squeaky-clean Dr. S in a relatively crisp plaid button up and maroon sweater. “Are we leaving soon?”

Daryl gives a nod of acknowledgement to the other man. “Yeah,” he says. “You eaten?”

“Yes. Actually, Carol showed my wife some vegetarian items you had already acquired, and she made something for myself and Inesh. She is excited to start cooking for everyone in Carol’s absence.”

Daryl mixes some powdered milk into Carol’s coffee, then is slapping a sugar packet against his palm. “How much experience you got doin’ this kinda thing?”

“What kind of thing?” the other man asks. “You mean ‘running’?”

Daryl chuckles lightly despite himself. “Right.”

Dr. S shrugs, his hands slipped into his trouser pockets. “We met you just—just as our group—” the man sets his mouth. “Well, we were on our own a long time before this. I believe I’ve been road-tested, so to speak.”

“You an’ all’a us, man,” Daryl says. “Good. I was thinkin’ we could go over some plant and medicine stuff while we’re out there. Bringin’ some buckets and soil for it.”

“To take things back with us?”

Daryl nods. “I’d like to have a garden here where we can use things like what you were talkin’ about with that plantain. Ain’t always gonna be no fancy bureau pharmacies around.”

Dr. S regards him with a shrewd gaze. “That’s quite a good idea, actually.”

“You amazed I got one?” Daryl jokes, bluntly. Dr. S is mortified.

“I apologize, Daryl, I—”

“No worries, man. Happens more than you’d think.” Daryl gives him a sly look. “Or maybe just as much as you’d think.”

Dr. S’s laugh looks like it surprises him. Then the sound of it evens out into something comfortable, and kind. They return to Carol with her coffee, which is leaking steam into the air. She greets Dr. S with a smile then turns her eyes to Daryl’s.

“We ready?”

…

Daryl swears he had seen from the crest of the highway a tall, seven story concrete building peeking out from among a smaller town passed. The roar of his bike in his ears, and the easiness of the asphalt pulling the Triumph’s tires along, mix luringly to form something altogether different at the sight of the storage units from so long ago.

They stop for the night at a marshy crux of 27. They are just outside of Columbus.

Daryl swings his leg over the bike in the oncoming dusk, propping it up by the kickstand and positioning the front wheel to act as a counterweight against this lean. Carol exits from the passenger’s side of the truck behind him, and Dr. S from the driver’s side.

“Do we find a building, or?” Carol asks the open-ended question to the other men. The truck has a cover, so the possibility of sleeping in the bed of it is not so far-fetched.

“Probably,” Daryl says. He turns to Dr. S, who is measuredly taking in the surroundings. It is strange to see him with a holster strapped to his thigh, and a knife at his hip. “What d’you think, Dr. S?”

“I would prefer shelter.” The man’s dark gaze is far away. “I have frequent nightmares about being trapped in cars by those—what did you call them?—walkers.”

This is how they come to sleep in a board-and-batten in the basin of Oswichee Creek. The name, Daryl thinks as he lay on his back on the dusty old floorboards, should be Mud Creek. All three pairs of their boots are caked with the earth, weighing ten pounds more than before.

Daryl wakes before the other two, his eyes adjusting to the early dawn streaming sparsely through long-ago boarded windows. He lifts himself to his elbows and, in the corner of the single room, thinks he can see the outline of someone sitting in a shredded wingback armchair. Its faded-into-nothing, once-floral fabric is torn from the plain yet proud wooden frame. Two boot tips, like copperhead snakes above black denim, point toward him.

Daryl rubs his face, weary. He knows it is not real—finds no trouble in pulling away from the image. But the feeling of it, the wanting, sinks deep into him like a stone skipped into a black pond. A stone that had been there all along and, unsettled by a slight ripple, brings itself once again to his attention.

He leaves the shelter silently, bringing some buckets with him into a nearby grove of trees to harvest. The time alone collecting useful cuttings clears his head, and eventually the mired feeling of getting stuck in the mud becomes a comfort unto itself.

Upon Daryl’s return, they decide to get an early start. Highway 27 offers a simpler trek, for a while. But when they pass the state boundary marker for Georgia, an unknown feeling grips Daryl’s chest.

“First time I left Georgia my whole life,” Daryl says, later, mostly to the dirt floor of their space for the evening. Daryl had no time to hunt, the sun setting just as they managed to find shelter for the night, so they are eating a ration of beans that Carol had concocted into a sort of salsa with a few of the tomatoes from the prison garden. A group of walkers had impeded their path that evening, and so they are sitting in relative silence and darkness inside a small wooden shack. Shovels and other tools line the walls, glinting in the scant moonlight falling through the spaces between planks in the roof.

“Is that true?” Carol murmurs to his left. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Daryl replies, lowering a full forkful of food from his lips. He is suddenly not hungry.

“Who would’ve thought you’d be doing this in the apocalypse?” Dr. S muses. Daryl can hear the sympathy in his voice.

The night falls and everyone sleeps, without much reaction at all to another day passing.

…

Daryl is up, again, before the others. Only this time no dreams plagued his night, nor visions. He has just risen, seemingly of his own accord, feeling a slight trill of anxiety through him as though someone were watching from afar.

He checks the perimeter shrewdly, ensuring that they all are safe, before making a small fire just outside the shed to heat water and coffee upon. Carol exits the shed soon after, her face screwed up in confusion at seeing Daryl awake.

“You sleep at all?” she asks him, running a hand over the cap of her skull, her close-cropped hair. Daryl nods.

“Of course.”

The easiness of his words does not fool her. Not even the coffee cup proffered, which she so desperately needs, makes a dent in her disbelief.

“Don’t wanna tell me, then?”

Daryl just shrugs. “Nothin’ to tell.”

Carol brings the coffee to her mouth, shooting him a hard look. Daryl is saved from having to react, as Dr. S’s form exits the shed just as the morning sun crests the horizon. Daryl quickly steals back into the structure, taking each viable tool into his hands to load into the bed of the truck. Shovels, shears, and rakes alike are added to their inventory—if, that is, they can manage to return to the prison in one piece.

…

The Tallahassee Bureau of Public Health pharmacy building is white, long, and low, and has a silvery wheelchair access ramp leading up to the front door. It is smaller, somehow different, than what Daryl had pictured.

They all three approach with knives drawn, and in Daryl’s case, a crossbow at the ready. When they arrive at the front door, Daryl notices that it has been pried open at the lock, mangled. It remains ajar, and Daryl shoots a dubious glance back at Carol.

“It was not like this a month ago,” Dr. S says, eyes full of concern. He adjusts his grip on the handle of his knife. “There were no signs of—”

“It’s fine,” Daryl murmurs, interrupting the other man. “Can’t control everythin’. Let’s see if there’s anythin’ left.”

They enter the space in formation. It is grey and damp, perhaps effected by a spring storm off the gulf. Overturned metal shelving blocks the entryway, and, beyond the small vestibule just inside, a handful of walkers in white lab coats amble about.

Daryl motions to the other two that he counts three. Carol confirms this from another vantage point inside the vestibule, and Dr. S nods. Daryl lines up a covering shot as Carol steals forward, small and silent, to sink her blade into the nearest one. The second nearest catches Daryl’s arrow, and Dr. S handles the last after some struggle. They secure the rest of the building, regrouping toward the center when they are sure there are no other threats.

“Rick and Hershel have told me what you are all short on,” Dr. S starts in a low voice. “I will try to find something useful, but it does not look like there’s much here.”

The doctor walks from shelf to shelf, picking through debris on the floor, wearing an open backpack backwards across his chest.

“Just yell if you need us,” Carol tells Dr. S. Daryl moves with her into an adjacent office space, filled with a few dusty desktop computers and metal filing cabinets. They dig around for anything that may be valuable for a few silent minutes, when Carol throws down a file of papers in frustration. They go scattering against the floor, a white and black typeface arc against low-pile utility carpet, and Daryl turns at this uncharacteristically brash movement from his friend.

“You just gonna disappear every morning, or are you gonna talk to me about what’s going on with you?” Her eyes reveal irritation, then, below that, fear. Daryl regards her.

“Are you?” he replies calmly.

She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. The irritation melts, and after a moment just the echo of fear exists, tempered by softness.

“The prison, having something again… It means we can lose something, again. That’s all I think about, anymore.”

Daryl nods. “I do, too, Carol.”

“How do you handle it?” she asks him. She worries her fingers into the crook of her arm like she has to hold herself inside, focus clearly on the outline of her body lest it drip to the floor or float away.

Daryl moves to collect her narrow shoulders into a hug. They stand like this for some time before Daryl withdraws.

“I go for a ride,” he tells her, a simple answer. She looks up into his eyes, then nods. “C’mon,” Daryl says gently. “Let’s check on Dr. S. There ain’t a thing in here worth havin’.”

“Find somethin’?” Carol asks Dr. S, back in the main room of the pharmacy. The man nods, looking up from the ground as they approach.

“Some things, yes,” he replies, bringing himself once again to his feet. “But you have many elderly, or at least more elderly than the other group I was with. They need more treatments than the young.”

Daryl sets his jaw. He looks to Carol, who sighs.

“Not much to be done about it,” she says wearily, letting it roll off her back.

So, four days for a swing and a miss. This doesn’t sit well with Daryl. They exit, back into the overbearing Florida sun.

“We can’t go back empty handed,” he mutters as they make their way to the truck, his bike. “Let’s raid some of those houses we passed on the way in. That nice lookin’ neighborhood.”

Carol looks at him, her eyes squinting against the light. She raises her hand to shield her eyes, an air of concern about her.

“It’s okay to just bring back what we’ve already found, Daryl. No need to take more risk, here. Rick will understand.”

Daryl shakes his head. It isn’t about that, he thinks. About Rick. It is about he himself, his need for this all to mean something. To protect, to ease, through this single action.

“I’m goin’. Y’all can come if you want, or not. Don’t matter to me.”

If it is all he can do for now, he is going to make damn sure he does it.

“What’s that?” Dr. S says, not catching Daryl’s headstrong murmurs. Carol’s face creases slightly in pain at Daryl’s flippancy, and then she turns to Dr. S.

“How would you feel about looking through medicine cabinets in that development up the road?” she asks him softly. They are standing in a crossroads. Dr. S looks from her to Daryl, recognizing the hard look of determination on the latter’s face. He sets his mouth in a line, dark eyes absorbing the light.

“I’m in.”

…

They arrive at the vehicles, and instead of throwing his leg over his bike, Daryl tosses the keys to Carol. She catches them mid-air with a look of mild surprise on her face.

“Remember what I taught you?”

The woman nods. She had learned how to ride about a month ago, under Daryl’s guidance. Apart from a spill that caused a deep gash in her upper arm, which Daryl had to do some quick thinking with cornstarch and a torn shirt hem bandage to stop the bleeding of, she was capable.

“Go ride,” Daryl tells her, soft. “We’ve got this.”

The corner of her mouth raises slightly. Then she is off, coming down hard on the kickstart as the motor roars to life beneath her.

“Shall we?” Dr. S asks. Daryl turns to him and nods, and they climb into the cabin of the truck.

…

“A lot of elderly people must have lived in this neighborhood. I’ve found much of what our own need.”

Daryl counts this as a needed victory, retrieving an arrow from the head of a walker near a set of French doors, which lead out into a greenhouse. The potted plants that had once inhabited this space have long since withered, bereft of rain, but just beyond the glass he can see a garden teeming with growth.

“I’m goin’ out there,” Daryl says to Dr. S, pointing. The man follows him, and they file through a smallish side door to take a closer look at what is growing in the winding beds.

“This looks like my wife’s friend’s garden,” Dr. S observes. “She was also a chef.”

“Yeah?” Daryl questions. “There stuff here we should be bringin’ back?”

“Let me look around,” Dr. S replies. The man moves off to take in what abundance lays in the garden beds, knife raised around corners of shrubbery to fend off potential attacks. Daryl feels a peace come over him in the near-noon sun in this fenced-in space. He closes his eyes to the brightness of it, remembering Rick’s expression as he slipped a mint leaf into his mouth for the first time, chewed. Rick’s skin under his fingertips as Daryl examined his bedframe-bruised ribs. Rick’s voice as he called him back by a whistle to tell him why, and how, he needed him. Daryl breathes in, deeply, feeling as though he were back in the forest. Back home, with the navy blue flannel pressed up against his face.

That is when he begins to help Dr. S bring the toiletry buckets out of the bed of the truck, along with the tools taken from their second-night shelter.

…

A golden-bronze plaque rests, half covered by the sun baked topsoil, to the right of his elbow as he bends into a nearby garden bed. He reaches out, wiping a hand over it. _Eden_ , it reads, in refined Romanesque letters. He traces the edges of the plaque absently before ripping his eyes away. Above it sits a tree, just a little more than a sapling, that has an array of deeply-lobed leaves displaying sometimes five, sometimes three rounded fingers. At the crux of certain branches hangs pendulous, inch-and-a-half orbs colored light green. Daryl reaches up to run his fingertips over them, investigating. The flesh of the fruit is hot to the touch, warmed by the sun. He plucks one from its place, and it falls heavily into his palm.

Daryl sinks his teeth into it almost on reflex, some vestige of a survival imperative from his ancestors directing the action. A hot, honeyed sweetness fills his mouth, and he looks at the inner flesh revealed as he chews—all purple-pink and yellow, the seeds inside stick out and reflect the imprint of his teeth. He takes another bite, and another, finishing the fruit in a matter of seconds.

“Dr. S,” he calls. “Come look at this.”

The man raises himself from an adjacent bed, walking over with his spade still in hand.

“Ah, a fig tree,” the doctor says. Daryl looks up at him.

“It’s growin’ fruit or somethin’,” Daryl tells him. Dr. S laughs.

“Yes, it does tend to do that,” he replies, reaching forward to inspect the leaves and brown-white bark. “A colleague of mine had one of these in her yard, in St. Augustine. It’s a handsome specimen, very healthy.”

Daryl decides then what he is going to do. He lifts himself from the edge of the bed, toward the truck. He takes a shovel into his hands from the open bed, then walks back through the house, to the tree.

“How far out from the base do I dig?” he asks the doctor, abrupt. The man looks at him with some bewilderment and amusement.

“A foot around and down should be fine. It is still young, small.”

Daryl sets to work, breaking ground with the shovel blade. He presses the sole of his shoe against one side, making sure not to disturb any leaves or branches with his movements.

Eventually he has uprooted the plant entire, and moves to place it within a particularly wide planter with fresh, fertilized soil. Dr. S looks on.

“That is a special one,” the other man claims. Daryl does not look up from his ministrations, instead working more ardently toward the survival, preservation of the sapling tree.

They finish clearing the surrounding houses, and, under the heat of the noon sun, wait for Carol to return on Daryl’s bike. Daryl is sitting with the fig tree next to him, sidled close, while Dr. S has swathes of freshly potted plants, herbs, and flowers alike around him. They are firmly in the center of the house’s long, asphalt driveway.

“You ever think much about God?” the other man starts, shocking Daryl to attention. He shrugs as if to let the question slip from him, but is instantly curious. For some reason he recalls the other day in which he encroached upon the Subramanian’s space in that thicket of forest.

“Not really,” he answers, honestly. “I mean, wasn’t really raised that way. Were you?”

Dr. S just shakes his head, a light laugh exiting his lips. They sit in some silence, the heat of the sun beating down on them.

“I saw you the other morning, in the woods by the train tracks.”

Daryl looks at him. “Yeah. Y’know, it ain’t safe, bein’ out there with no one watchin’.”

“We had our weapons in the grass,” Dr. S says. “Some things, like being in nature and sharing a moment of peace with my family, are worth the risk.” His black eyes meet Daryl’s. “You were out there alone, no?”

Daryl does not respond, taking the question as a rhetorical one. “What was that, anyway? With the hands?”

“Mudras,” Dr. S says. “It is meditation, for me. Worship, for my wife. Inesh tells me he is still not sure, which one he is doing. Or maybe it will end up being something else altogether.”

“Why?”

Dr. S shrugs. “Inesh has time to make up his mind, what he is doing and what it means to him. All I can hope is that he finds something that makes meaning for himself, for his place in the world.”

“What do you call that? Prayin’, or somethin’ else?”

“It is simply spirituality. I am devout in the way some Indians are,” Dr. S murmurs. “I have my past, and my parents. They are my guides, laying down lines that I know I should not cross.” He pauses, motions with an open palm out into the street in front of them, the empty mansions baking in the Florida sun. “But the future is something else entirely,” he says. “Undetermined. Not even the greater gods of my mother would have been able to predict this. Which is why I think to keep a practice that imparts meaning, connection, and comfort.”

Daryl has a hand on his knee, noticing he has adopted one of Rick’s signature poses.

“How d’you know, or—how d’you keep that, hold onto it, with everythin’, now?”

Dr. S sits back. “The Bhagavad Gita tells us that there is nothing wasted in this life,” he says. “Maybe this was not the life we were thinking it would be, one year ago. But it is still life. And we all, still, have choices.”

The answer is simple, but it is something that Daryl has needed to hear for a long time, now. He is deeply affected, letting the silence absorb his thoughts.

“I don’t know about all that,” Daryl is hearing himself say, “but there’s just stuff that’s right in the world, still. Y’know?”

Dr. S nods fervently. “Yes. The compass inside of you is acutely attuned, Daryl, which is becoming rare. I’ve found that many men, women, and in-between—many of us, we have fallen prey to our darkest sides. I do not believe that this is human nature, or a necessity to reconcile with, to begrudgingly accept. I think, instead,” he continues, giving Daryl a long look. “I think it is up to people like me and you, and Carol, and Rick, Hershel—to teach us again what it means to be in nature, in a community: All of it as one. Is that not blatant in the bounty here? Is that not clear in what things whatever god or gods, or even we ourselves, provide for us?”

Daryl sits, mulling this over. “It’s you sayin’ anythin’ worth somethin’ in this conversation, Dr. S,” Daryl murmurs. “I never did nothin’ like that, that prayin’, or thought too long about anythin’ like this, before you an’ your family came along.”

Dr. S readjusts gently, leaning forward. “Daryl, this is simply humanity, at its core. We teach each other one of the many words for things that have been inside of us, all along, if we were only to listen closely enough—allow ourselves to feel.”

Daryl responds by tightening his grip on the fig tree, pulling the pot closer to him. He knows his eyes betray his mind, now, settled in some ways that needed settling, but unsettled in other, new ways. As if in response to this, Dr. S looks to him.

“One is made by belief,” the other man quotes, his dark eyes depthless. “As one believes, so one is.”

…

A week has passed since then, and Daryl is pulling routine surveillance in the prison yard sometime near dusk. The curved horizon beyond the prison fences is full of fire: orange, red, and violent pink smeared in broad strokes against the almost-white, light blue sky. He has seen them out there, the Subramanians, other mornings, with their hands clasped in various positions as they breathed, and time passed them by almost as if it did not exist. Daryl watched and felt the shadow of peace fall over him just for doing so. He thinks that one day he will ask to join them. One day.

He lets his gaze shift from the tree line, and into the tallish grasses near the edge of their compound. That is when he sees a single arm extend upward, as if from a fallen body. Daryl’s muscles jolt into action, but he stops himself when he realizes it is just Rick taking a break from his labors in the field. Indeed, the other man is lying on his back—he extends his hand carefully up into the small canopy the fig tree forms, at the base of its tenderly planted roots, fingers reaching toward the misshapen hands that the fig leaves make. Then, Rick places his palm evenly against one of the leaves, soft, flush with the downy veins of it.

Daryl shivers despite the heat, thinking of ripe fruit and its sweet flesh in his mouth, the loud yellow sun, and the way it felt to finally, finally make a choice in the dimness of his cell so many weeks ago.


	3. The Shower

Immediately after returning from Tallahassee, Daryl, Carol, and Dr. S take to unloading the new equipment and plants with the help of several other wards. They make quick work of it, careful work, piling the plants in the dimness of the coming evening up against one part of the fence, for easy access later. Eventually Hershel comes to join them, swinging easily down the steps, to convene with Dr. S about the new inventory of medicine. They set to drafting up tentative plans for distribution to the seniors, and Daryl pauses for some water, watching them. As he does this, Carol claps him on the shoulder.

“I’ve gotta shower,” she says with a grimace. “Funny how you get used to having one of those again.”

Daryl nods at her, watching her go. It is a few moments before he brings his bike underneath one of the catwalks in the yard, moving it against a wall, out of the way and shielded from rain here.

This is when he finds himself making his way to Rick’s room in cell block C.

Passing Beth’s doorway, he finds it empty. Judith must be with her father, he thinks to himself, and moves past the next few doorways. That is when the curtain to Rick’s room flutters open, held to the side by one dark hand. Michonne exits with a look back into the cell, and Daryl’s steps slow despite himself.

Michonne takes her hand from the curtain as she notices Daryl. She nods at him, a gesture that he returns. Instead of merely walking by, she motions for them to move a way off and speak.

“You just get back?” he asks her, voice low.

“Yeah,” Michonne says. “You?”

“Yeah.” Daryl pauses, watching as she mulls something over. Her tone is serious, her eyes shadowed.

“We shouldn’t leave him alone, anymore,” the swordswoman starts. “With you going to Tallahassee and me in Senoia, he was seein’ things all the time.”

Daryl swallows, sighs. “Shit. I didn’t think—”

Michonne tilts her head. “It’s not anyone’s fault, Daryl.”

“I know.” But he doesn’t feel like this is a truth, more like a shade of a lie. He feels responsible.

Michonne grasps his upper arm comfortingly. “We’ll just arrange with one another better, alright?”

Daryl nods. “Alright.”

She takes a few hesitant steps, then turns to make her way toward the armory.

Daryl moves tentatively toward Rick’s cell, knocks on the concrete jamb.

“Come in.”

Rick is cradling Judith close to him, a bottle held in her mouth. His eyes brighten upon seeing him, but Daryl can tell the man has been haunted.

“It’s good to see you,” Rick says with some vestige of relief. “How was the run?”

Daryl clears his throat. “Pharmacy was ransacked, but we managed elsewhere. That Dr. S knows his medicinal plants. Lots’a things for you and Hershel to put in the garden.”

Rick looks back down at Judith, rocking her slightly. “That’s good.”

Daryl wonders if he should push it—wonders how many questions he already got from Michonne, and if he’d just be asking him to repeat the same, possibly painful information. But his concern gets the better of him.

“You alright?”

Rick doesn’t meet his eyes, just continues the same gentle ministrations in feeding Judith. When she has finished her bottle a half minute later, Rick places it on the thin metal shelf behind him and wraps her tighter in the blanket swaddled around her. He regards Daryl from the corner of his eye.

“No,” the man murmurs. “But what can you do?”

Daryl knows he does not mean ‘you’ specifically, but cannot manage to shake this creeping guilt.

“I’m sorry, Rick. Should’a been here.”

Rick simply shrugs, bending to place Judith into her crib at the base of his bunk. The arch of his spine is wan, and Daryl wonders how much he had been eating, sleeping. Wonders how long he worked his body until it was wrecked by the earth just beyond the concrete prison walls. He is reminded of flagellation, the ousting of demons through self-sacrifice and self-punishment. He is reminded of the belt buckle, and almost winces.

“You didn’t miss much,” Rick says gently. “Sounds like you got some important things, too, so.”

“You need anythin’?”

“No. Send Dr. S and Hershel in though, if you see them. Wanna talk about what we’re gonna do in regards to the elderly.”

Daryl takes this as a cue to leave, which he does so silently. He finds Michonne cleaning some handguns in the armory, her sword still strapped across her back. She lifts her dark eyes from her work for a moment, acknowledging Daryl’s presence, before turning back to her ministrations. Daryl leans against a far wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What is it?” Michonne asks evenly after a few expectant moments. Her slim fingers work expertly.

“I don’t know,” Daryl says, honest. Michonne sighs.

“I don’t like seeing him that way, either,” she guesses. “It’s so foreign.”

Daryl does not respond. He watches her, her fingers, the firm muscles of her finely wrought forearms as she pulls slides back, claps magazines back into place.

“Judith is low on formula,” Michonne eventually says. Her eyes raise to Daryl’s own. “If you don’t wanna handle it this time, I don’t mind going.”

Daryl shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he repeats himself. He runs a hand over his face, stirring from against the wall. “I’ll let you know in the morning, okay?”

Michonne nods. Daryl leaves the armory, seeking Hershel and Dr. S in order to send them Rick’s way.

…

He spends dawn on patrol in the yard, watching Rick pull cuttings from Eden out into loamy, freshly-tilled beds, burying their roots deep into the soil, watering. The man is eventually sweating, wiping his brow with the back of yellowed suede gardening gloves. Daryl bites his cheek, moving his eyes back to the tree line with some stilted desire running like electricity through his mouth.

At breakfast, he tells Michonne he will handle the run.

Zach volunteers to be his companion for this one, and Bob Stookey tells Daryl about a hardware store yet untouched, not far from the daycare where they are heading for Judith’s formula, anyway.

“Probably has chicken wire, lumber, stuff like that,” Bob tells him. “Thought y’all’d need it with so many new plants.”

Daryl agrees, thanking him before heading off to set up the truck, his bike.

“So, like, just a day run?” Zach questions brightly from beside him, shoving a tool bag into place among other provisions in the bed. Daryl grunts in the affirmative, turning to pick up the next item they will be taking with them on the journey.

“That’s good. Don’t wanna be away from Beth too long. She might forget about me.”

Daryl snorts, but does not acknowledge this saccharine half-joke any further. He pushes a first aid kit in, and looks around to see if there is anything the two of them have forgotten.

“You good?” he asks Zach, eventually. Zach nods. Daryl slams the tailgate up and into place, circling the rear end of the truck to where his bike is leaned against its own kickstand. “Let’s ride out.”

…

They park a way off from the daycare, Daryl signaling Zach behind him in the truck with a movement from his raised hand. Daryl recalls that first run he made with Maggie, right after the woman had cut Judith out of Lori’s stomach. This is bittersweet—this is something Daryl finds hard to shake as they enter the structure, entirely different from that first one, yet still bringing forth echoes from the halls of time.

They find the formula quickly and are digging around in drawers in some office when Daryl finds an mp3 player, wrapped around with generic black earbuds. He unfurls the length of wire, tries turning the thing on. Unsurprisingly it is a brick, unresponsive. Then he looks around further, finds a charging cable. He slips all these into his bag, saving it for something. For someone. Daryl can hear Merle’s voice creep around the shell of his ear, nagging— _You gettin’ him presents now? Shit._ His brother’s cruel face is grey, one eye blue and the other yellow-red. _Next thing you’re gonna tell me you’re lookin’ for a ring. Doesn’t he already wear one, y’know, from that marriage to his **wife**?_

“Hardware store,” Daryl calls, voice hard, over to Zach, without any preamble. He slams the drawer shut, exiting the building, as the teen hurries to catch up.

…

Zach hops behind the counter. The hardware store is dated, small—Daryl is reminded of the small mom-and-pops near his own hometown, before e-commerce was a thing. A thick layer of dust covers everything in the dim space.

“Army?” Zach asks, his voice muffled, tucked as it is underneath the counter. Daryl keeps his bow drawn across his chest, gaze alternatingly set on the front and back doors while the teen searches.

“What?” he responds, thinking this is Zach’s daily guess about what his pre-change profession was. “No.”

Zach pops back up behind the counter. He is holding a prosthetic leg and a pair of khaki green face goggles. “Wait—I mean the previous owner of the store, or someone who worked here. She was army.”

Daryl frowns at the sight of the teen in this strange place, holding two equally strange things in either hand. Then, he breaks into laughter.

Zach joins in. “Although, good to know, about you,” he says when the moment subsides. He pushes the prosthetic into his bag and slings the goggles around his neck by their wide elastic strap. “Hoping Hershel will be able to fit into his new digs,” he says, offhand, like it is every day that one runs across a disused prosthetic calf and foot. “And hopefully get off my back about sleeping with his daughter.”

…

They are sitting around a small cooking fire out front of the hardware store after packing lumber, chicken wire, and some other sundries into the bed of the truck. Today’s late lunch includes coffee, and tuna fish sandwiches on some of Mrs. S’s herbed flatbread.

“You remember the days back then, where it felt like everyone had just dropped off the face of the planet? You’d get in the car and not see anyone on the road, or go get food and even the employees weren’t behind the counter? You remember how strange that was?”

Daryl looks up from the edge of his coffee mug, making a face.

“Now that’s our lives, man,” Zach continues, tearing off a corner of his sandwich and putting it in his mouth. “That’s every day. If you walked in a coffee shop right now and saw some dude in a green apron behind the counter, alive and ready to take your order, you’d shit.”

“You’re so fuckin’ weird, dude,” Daryl says with some incredulity. He cannot keep the laughter out of his voice. “What the hell’d you do anyway, before all this?”

Zach shrugs. “I was just a high-schooler.”

Daryl gives him a steady look. “Yeah, I know. But were you like one’a those college track kids, or what?”

Zach smiles at this. “I guess, yeah, but that’s not uncommon. Everyone my age was being pushed into that before the change happened. My moms would get on me and all my sisters about it, since the time we were kids. They wanted us to do so well we could get scholarships and things like that.”

“You’re still a kid, man,” Daryl says, with the realization that Zach had lost his family, if there weren’t here with him, now. He does not pry into further—but Zach’s face remains bright.

“I know you’re thinkin’ about what I’ve lost,” Zach tells Daryl. “It’s okay. I had a big family. They’re all gone, and it was hard for a while, being alone. But,” he continues, “now I’ve got the prison, and y’all, and Beth. The past pays visits, sometimes, though not so much anymore. It’s easier with people around. Better.”

Daryl ruminates on this in silence, looking into the oily blackness of his coffee. “I had a brother, y’know,” he eventually tells the teen. Zach nods quietly.

“I know.”

“He was a piece of shit to me basically our whole lives, but it’s still—” Daryl blows a breath out of his mouth. “The past pays visits, a lot.”

Zach thinks about this for a moment, toying with the last uneaten scrap of his sandwich. “Think about what you have, not what you had,” the youth starts. “Just—look forward. Like that dude Orpheus from mythology, the singer guy. He got his girl back from Hades, but if he looked back on his way out of the pit, she would disappear forever.”

Daryl squints. “And, did he—look back?”

“Yeah,” Zach says. “But that’s the whole point of the story, isn’t it?”

Daryl doesn’t quite understand. Zach laughs lightly, and it is not a sound made at Daryl’s expense, but instead something that speaks to the ineffability of the current predicament—of human history, like this, now, that something so ancient could still apply. It is comforting.

“If you look back at what’s lost,” Zach explains, “then you lose the future, too.”

Daryl does not have long to sit with this unexpected wisdom. A small group of walkers are approaching, and Daryl jumps up to smother the flames of their cooking fire immediately. Zach is reaching for his pack when an errant walker comes from the other direction, and the teen is forced to use the bag to hit it bodily away from him. The weight of it, with the prosthetic, knocks Zach off-balance. Daryl strides over and grabs the youth under the arm, his crossbow in his other hand.

“Inside, now,” Daryl demands gruffly, letting go of Zach at the same time he brings his bow up to his shoulder to fire a bolt at the nearest walker. It sinks in, but he has no time to retrieve it before the others are on them. Zach is pushing open the door to the hardware store, and Daryl is close behind. He grasps the metal jamb, steadying himself to line up another shot, when the heavy glass door closes on the ring and little finger of his left hand. He hears a sickening crunching sound, and for one moment his brain is ahead of his body’s sensory system—he knows, can see that they are broken, but cannot feel it yet.

From over his shoulder, Zach is firing a handgun with a silencer at a walker not five feet off, dragging Daryl out of the doorframe and moving quickly to close it, latch it. Daryl is cradling his mangled hand close, thankful for the teen’s quick thinking.

Then the pain pours over him. It takes all of him not to groan with the agony of it, a fine sweat breaking out on his brow.

“Shit,” Zach says, quickly looking around to see that none of the walkers had gotten into the building while they were unaware. Seeing that the area is safe, Zach strides back to where Daryl leans against the counter.

“Broken?” Zach asks, holstering his gun and moving to take Daryl’s hand into his own to assess the damage. Daryl draws in a hissing breath as he uncovers his fingers, bleeding, skin broken, mangled into an unnatural shape. He cannot move them.

“Yep,” Zach confirms darkly. “Our first aid is in the truck, too.”

“You get a headcount?” Daryl manages to bite, bringing his hand back into the protection of his body, cradling it close. Zach’s mouth is set in a firm line.

“Seven or so,” Zach says. “Couldn’t see if more were coming around the corner.”

The door’s light is blocked by the walkers’ bodies, ricocheting stupidly off the glass. Daryl is glad for the wire mesh in it, especially as a fine spiderwebbing of cracking begins against the weight of the undead.

“Man, we’ve gotta go,” Daryl says tersely against the fire burning in his hand. “Let ‘em in and run out the back or somethin’.”

“Let them in?” Zach asks with concern. “No, man.”

“Sometimes you gotta be stupid, Zach,” Daryl is saying as he collects himself, as he pulls himself off the counter and begins to make his way to the back of the cluttered, dusty shop. “Sometimes stupid works. Remember that.”

He looks out the window of the back door, and there is nothing around that would suggest they’re under attack.

“You want me to do it, or we just gonna wait for them to break through on their own?” Daryl growls. He slings his bow over his shoulder, onto his back, grabbing Zach with his good hand. He thinks the teen might be settling into mild shock, but the adrenaline from his injury spurns Daryl onward. He hopes against hope that he will be able to grip the throttle on his bike with only three working fingers.

Zach comes to at this brashness. He swallows. “I’ll do it.”

In one swift movement Zach is unlatching the door and kicking it back as the bodies push it in, buying a second or two to zig zag through the shelves of the store, back to where Daryl is waiting, giving cover with his hunting knife. They escape out the back, Daryl sinking his knife into the head of a walker near his bike. Twisting the throttle causes him to cry out in pain but he manages, the engine revving to life underneath him as he hears Zach turn over the truck a half-second later.

They don’t stop for miles. The sky is darkening quickly as they continue on the old county highway, and Daryl’s hand is shocked into numbness.

Then, the rain starts.

Slow at first, barely wetting his chapped lips. Then a wind picks up a deluge of biblical proportions is coming down hard at an angle. Obfuscating the road completely, droplets of rain feel like stones against his cheeks, whipping his skin, until Daryl feels certain he is bleeding from the force of their impact.

From behind him, Zach is flashing the brights of the truck. Daryl pulls over, underneath an overpass, and runs his good hand over his face—pushing his dripping hair out of his eyes.

Zach exits the truck, the clap of the door shutting ringing out against the concrete shelter like thunder.

“How can you see to ride, through this?” the teen yells over the near-deafening sound of the rain. They approach one another, Daryl sodden like a rat half-drowned.

“Can’t,” Daryl replies. His hand aches, finally able to let off the agony of the stiff throttle.

“Don’t you wanna put the bike in the bed of the truck? Come with me in the cabin?”

Daryl shakes his head. “I would, but we can’t winch it up there, man. And I’m not leavin’ it. This was my brother’s pride an’ joy, and I can only imagine what that asshole’d have to say if I left it on some godforsaken highway.”

“Okay, man. I get it. Then let’s wait it out a bit,” Zach tells him. “Lemme splint your fingers, at least.”

Daryl agrees this is a good idea. Zach digs underneath the tarp affixed to the back of the truck, withdrawing the first aid kit. After a moment he pulls forth some wooden popsicle sticks, tape, and gauze.

“You done this before or somethin’?” Daryl asks the teen as he sets to work. Zach nods.

“One of my sisters, Marissa, did kickboxing for years,” he says. “She’d get some gnarly hand injuries.”

As Zach works quietly, Daryl stares at the chopper leaning where it is, gleaming with collected drops of rain. He runs his eyes over the Triumph’s signature sleek profile, its ape hanger handlebars, the fixture he had installed on the back for his crossbow. In all the time he thought Merle was dead, Daryl had only done this one mod to the entire bike. Though he had copious options, small fixes that would not only make the bike suit his needs better but also make it become his, and he has never done it. Why?

The thought makes him angry. The answer, when it comes, makes him angrier. He fumes, silently, waiting for Zach to finish with his splint. When the teen does, this latent emotion erupts from him with the ferocity of which the rainstorm had started. He stalks over to the edge of the overpass, finding a particularly jagged rock, and turns back to the chopper. Holding the rock firm in his right hand, he sets to scratching the Nazi insignia from the gas tank. Slowly, at first, and then desperate as the pain of his fingers and the droning of the rain and every other thing he has felt today wells into something entirely else inside, pours forth. He doesn’t care about the paint job, only cares about eviscerating this scrap of his brother. Scouring it from existence. Making the bike his own, once and for all.

Zach looks on in an understanding silence, his arms crossed across his chest. When Daryl finally finishes, chucking the rock to the side, he meets the teen’s even gaze.

“Fuck, I feel better,” he admits with a dark chuckle. He wipes his sweating brow with the back of his hand, thinking about what Zach had said about the past, the future. At this, the rain lets up a little. A bit of sun can be seen on the horizon in the direction of the prison.

“Wanna use these?”

Daryl takes what Zach is proffering—the army issue goggles from the hardware store.

“Thanks, man,” Daryl says. He straps them over his hair, his ears, bringing his soaking bandana from his pocket to wind around the lower half of his face. This makes Zach’s mouth crack into a cocky smile.

“Hell yeah, dude,” the teen says. “You look awesome.”

Daryl just shoves him, lightly; a brotherly gesture. They get back on the road, and somehow the rain doesn’t seem to touch Daryl like it did before: Instead running in rivulets over the deeply rented silver of the gas tank, bursting through black paint, like some kind of viscerally alive thing emerging from a grave.

…

Closer to the prison, Daryl is concerned that the rain will have made the shallow single-lane roads too muddy to cross, and for good reason. The front tire of his bike kicks up a thick sludge over his shins and thighs, while the back lifts mud into an arc over his spine.

But both he and Zach make it through this final trial, pulling up to the prison. And by this time the sun is once again shining in the cloudless sky.

Daryl feels like something dredged up out of a lake as they return to the prison yard. Zach ambles past in the truck, throwing a sympathetic look his way out the driver’s side window. Daryl kills the engine to the chopper, swinging his sodden, mud-caked leg over the seat.

Inside, in the kitchen, Carol and Mrs. S laugh heartily at his water-logged and muddied form. Their hands are covered in flour, and something smells of vanilla.

“You’re doing your own laundry this week,” Carol tells him. “And don’t come into the cell block with your shoes like that,” she chides, as he tries to move around to make beeline for his room. “Take a shower first, Daryl. You’re gonna track that shit all over and make a chore for some poor newbie.”

Daryl groans, “Fine, mom. Christ.”

He trudges away, instead following the hall that brings him to the men’s showers. Since Maggie had asked them to work on scavenging tarps, Daryl has not been able to spot any on runs. Hence, the open floor of the showers is white and gleaming in the relative light filtering in through small, barred windows set high in the walls. Rain barrels had been rigged with hand pumps to facilitate something akin to a pre-change shower. A collection of small toiletry bottles stands next to high stacks of clean towels.

He settles himself heavily on a bench just on the other side of a partition, separating sinks and toilet stalls from the showers. The hallways are empty at this time of day, as usual. Everyone is busy working on something else as ants on a hill. Upon the cessation of the rain, Daryl is sure that the yard once again was able to be worked in, tended to. He thinks briefly of Rick getting caught by sudden rain—how the man would weave back to relative shelter under the empty horse stable, or maybe just stand there in the middle of it all and tilt his face up toward the sky.

He pulls his shoes off with a wet squelch, babying his broken fingers. The rest of his clothing comes off in sheets, and he can see why Carol had said what she said. They could plant another garden in the amount of crud around him by the time he has undressed. Lastly, he pulls off the carefully splinted bandage from his fingers, wincing as the tape pulls at broken skin. It is muddy, made useless by the rain—plus, he realizes he should probably have one of the two doctors take a look at it, now that he is home.

After this, Daryl moves to stand, bare except for the mud, collecting some shampoo and soap. He crosses over to the other side of the partition, finding a far shower head and wrapping his non-injured hand around a pump. He is pushing down on the apparatus when he hears some quiet shuffling and a sigh on the other side of the divide. It takes a few strokes to get the apparatus working, and before he is able to adequately siphon the water up from the barrel, Rick walks around the corner.

“Hey,” the other man says lightly. “Thought I seen your gear out there.”

Rick is completely nude, in a similarly muddied state. The man walks forward to take the shower next to his own.

Averting his eyes, Daryl hopes that the haste of the movement does not give away his uneasiness at witnessing Rick’s bare form. Truthfully, it is not the first time he has seen Rick as such, or been around him like this. There were many moments before this in riverbeds, and at the prison, even, where they had stood or bent next to one another and bathed. Nearly everyone in their original family had been like this with one another on the road, at one point or another. Daryl was never bothered by it—he had never noticed it before, really.

But it is different, now, with Rick. Incredibly different.

“What happened to you?” Rick calls, moving to bring water up through the pipes and into the head of the shower.

“What happened to you?” Daryl counters tersely. He had clocked the caked-on dirt in the man’s curls, what was smeared across his neck and arms, before he had turned away.

“You’re gonna think this is ridiculous,” Rick chuckles. “The piglets knocked me down in the pen.”

Daryl scoffs. He releases the hold at the base of the showerhead and water, warmed from the sun, pours over his shoulders, head, and face. He is relieved that it gives him an excuse to try and push Rick’s presence out of his mind, or at the very least get used to it, but the other man’s shower starts up and adds to the echoing, splashing water in the tiled room. There is no avoiding it, no normalizing it. He is desperately aware that Rick is naked and standing a mere five or six feet away. He feels a heat rush over his face, crawl down his neck.

“Muddy supply run?” Rick ventures a few moments later.

Daryl is having trouble with the soap, trying to keep his broken fingers out of the water’s heavy spray while still working up enough lather to do anything worth doing. Daryl finds it impossible to adequately remove the earth from his skin with only the one hand. Rick must see this, waiting for an answer, because Daryl hears two feet padding damply over to him, senses Rick’s body cast a shadow close to his own from over his shoulder.

“Give me that,” Rick murmurs. Daryl holds the soap bar out with his good hand, and Rick takes it gently. He moves it around in his palms, sets to working it into the mud streaked across Daryl’s shoulder blades. He uses careful movements over the scars—even though they do not harm Daryl, now, too long healed.

“How’d you hurt your hand?” Rick asks in a low tone of concern. His voice is always like this, one way or another—concerned, abrupt, dampened in some way by the realities of danger that still bite at the edges of their mostly mild existence. It is like there is never a break from it. There is never a reprise where they can adequately fill their lungs and start fresh. Be at rest.

“A door,” Daryl responds, feeling dumb as Rick’s fingers push aside his hair, massage slowly into the nape of his neck. “So stupid. Got caught.”

Rick hums. He brings his hands down to Daryl’s upper arms, his palms slipping easily over soap-soaked skin. “You gonna see Hershel or Dr. S about it?”

“Mm-hmm,” Daryl replies. Rick’s hands glide over his torso, working soap carefully into every nook. Daryl realizes he has closed his eyes, Rick still behind his back as he continues with his careful ministrations. Eventually Rick is reaching past him for the shampoo, and the man’s hipbone brushes the swell of his ass cheek briefly. He swears he feels two lips and a bit of stubble meet the scarred skin of what had been one particularly bad gash. Daryl bites his tongue, remembering how it had bled through his shirt and against his bed sheets in the night.

Then, those fingers massage shampoo into his mane, moving up his skull to the crown of his head. They are navigating wind-made tangles with relative ease and painlessness.

“Face me,” Rick instructs lowly, once he has created an adequate lather everywhere else except around Daryl’s face. Daryl does this, his eyes still closed to avoid lowering them or raising them. He hears the steady thrum of the water, Rick’s even breathing, and the sound of the suds being made between his strands of hair. Feels Rick’s fingertips at his temples, his forehead. The scent of the shampoo is clean and sweet and so foreign he thinks he must open his eyes or simply start to not exist here, in this space.

So, he opens his eyes. Rick meets his gaze coolly, momentarily, mainly looking past him to focus on the task at hand. Daryl watches the reflection in the man’s eyes, so close to him now that he is able to see the shower there in their clear blue surface.

“Lean back,” Rick murmurs. “Close your eyes.”

Daryl does as he is instructed. He feels the thick swathes of suds run out of his hair and down his shoulders, his back, his spine, in rivulets. No one has ever taken care of him in this way, and his chest aches from the sweetness of it. He does his best to only appreciate this one facet, and block out the fact that Rick’s body is hovering so close to his he can almost feel it expanding with Rick’s gentle breathing against him.

Daryl reaches up with his good hand to sluice the sudsy water from his eyes, pushing his fringe back from his forehead. He opens his eyes again in the dimly lit shower, focusing on Rick’s tender face.

“Your turn?” he jokes lightly with the other man. He reaches up, rubs one muddy curl between his thumb and forefinger. “Can’t promise I’ll be as gentle as you.”

His roguish smile is not met. Rick’s eyes have gone imperceptible, staring opaquely. Daryl searches the gaze for a moment, moving from eye to eye, then eye to cheek, cheek to mouth. Before he can think of a way to defend the action, Daryl is grasping Rick’s jaw and stealing forward, pressing his mouth firmly against the other man’s.

Rick freezes at this, shoulders going rigid, and Daryl instantly withdraws. He keeps his hand on Rick’s face but allows for a bit of space, some weakness entering his once-bold limbs.

“You still call the shots,” Daryl breathes, giving Rick room to remove himself if he so chooses. “Don’t gotta be anythin’ other than this, just this.”

Rick’s brow crumbles elegantly at this, finally letting go. Then that wanting mouth is hot against his own again. He parts his lips for Rick’s tongue, using his left inner wrist to wrap around to Rick’s lower back, hold the man tight to his body as their mouths fight, melt, underneath the spray of the shower. Rick lets out a moan, involuntary and so sweet, that Daryl can’t help but groan in response.

The fire of the kiss lulls into something gentle when Rick’s hands reach up to cup his face. Though he feels Rick’s growing hardness pushing against his hip, Daryl allows the other man to remove himself at the last press of the kiss, allows Rick to take a step back from his mouth, his bare body. The man’s eyes remain lidded, almost closed, staring at the floor—a hand remains, wrapped around his wrist.

“Just so you know,” Rick murmurs, “I’m still thinkin’ about it.”

Daryl stands like a statue. He thinks that if he would allow himself, would dare to take the man into another passionate kiss, that he wouldn’t know how to stop. That he would want to take Rick, that he would run his hands over the entirety of the other man’s body, broken fingers be damned, and burn the image of the man’s face split open in pleasure into his mind. He wouldn’t know how to not look, not remember, not want so deeply that it makes this pit in him larger, makes it bottomless. Makes it ache.

“Good,” Daryl finally growls in reply.

Rick’s thumb brushes over his skin once, lightly, before that hand slips from him. He hears the other man shake a towel out, hears clothing being gathered, hears Rick leave: those footsteps get farther away until they disappear.

All at once, the shower sputters out. Standing wet and alone, Daryl’s half-hard cock twitches.

“Fuck,” he curses, loudly, to no one in particular.


	4. Horses

Daryl finds himself in the pastures and forest outside the prison for nearly the whole next day. He cannot say what keeps him out there in the open, in the freeingly claustrophobic lungs of nature, but only because he does not want to admit it to himself—that he wants Rick so badly it hurts.

If he is being honest with himself, it has been hurting now for a while.

But Daryl is not ready to be honest with himself, not yet. It is easier to say he is surveilling the area, ensuring that there is no one lying in wait in the brush, than to bring this truth to the front of his mind for more than a second. So, he disappears, spends time where he knows nothing can touch him, where he feels at home. He makes his own meals from found things out there, using his hunting knife; kills walkers; smokes a cigarette or two after climbing up a sturdy black willow at the edge of a pond, leaning obliquely back into a high crux that some of its branches make. He fits perfectly, almost as if it grew for him alone.

He stays up there a long while, lost in weeping leaves, even after the smoke has turned into ash save for the yellowed filter he plays with, absently, between his fingers.

Just as he is about to swing back down to the ground, a horse comes from the edge of the surrounding trees, and cautiously bends to take a drink at the edge of the water. Daryl watches, recognizes it as one of the horses he had seen roaming close to the prison, but never within grasp. He doesn’t dare move, even to breathe, silent as the beast blunts its thirst.

Then he dares. He removes himself noiselessly from the tree, climbing down—the inner arches of his boots slipping down the dark bark, catching here and there as he makes his descent. He swings carefully to the high grass around the willow’s roots, making a circle with his steps away from the horse, sure to give it a wide berth for the first moment it will spot him, careful not to spook it too soon.

He is about fifty feet off the beast when it brings its snout from the water. She is a mare, Daryl can see—chestnut colored, turned reddish in the late afternoon sunlight. She flicks her long ochre tail impetuously, staring at him from the corner of her eye, her head fully raised now and turned. He takes a few steps closer to her, approaching sideways, trying to look like as small of a threat as possible.

At twenty feet, she moves her front hoof against the ground and whinnies, backing up a bit. Daryl freezes, caught in a stand-off. She is sure to bolt if he comes any closer, and he dares not breathe for the possible repercussions it could have.

They stare at one another for a long time like this, opposed, before the mare seems to settle. She recovers the steps she had taken backward, moving and bending to drink at the pond once more. Daryl takes this opportunity to advance, brushing through the tall grass as quietly as possible. He knows she knows he is coming closer, and she drinks with a slow wariness as he approaches.

He is within ten feet of her, his toes wet from the mud at the bank of the pond. He is navigating through a crop of cattails when she raises her head again, this time quickly. Her tail swishes from side to side, slapping her haunches. Daryl raises his hands and she snorts at the movement, but does not back away. He wishes he had a carrot, an apple—anything he could win her favor with, entice her with. But he has to make due with nothing but his open palm, which he stretches toward her over the last few feet separating them.

The process is agonizingly slow, but the mare is braver than most. Maybe smelling him, knowing he is not one of the dead ones she has to run from, has stayed her, piqued her curiosity.

“Attagirl,” he murmurs gruffly, watching as her ears turn toward him at this sound. She snorts again, her lean sides heaving with her hesitancy, but still she does not move. She must be fifteen hands tall at the withers—her head looming over him. “It’s okay. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

She raises a hoof again, boned knee bending, at just five feet away. “It’s okay,” Daryl breathes again, extending his fingers as far as they will go. She looks healthy, considering, and he wonders if she has been separated from the others he had seen her with, before. “It’s okay, girl.”

He places the flat of his palm on her neck at the shoulder, the warmth of her short hairs radiating deeply into his skin. She is buzzing with anxiety, he can feel—but still she does not run. He brushes her carefully with his hand, moving it soothingly down the length of her neck. She shoves him off a bit and he lets up, then comes back at her with both his hands, firm, against her shoulder. His bandaged, broken fingers do not seem to bother her. She is breathing in heavy bursts through her nose, her single eye locked on his own gaze. He shushes her, petting her, inching closer, still.

Then there is a loud crack from the edge of the pasture, at the line of the woods. A group of three walkers are approaching, howling. The mare whinnies nervously, breaking away from Daryl’s hands as she makes a sudden, powerful dash away from him and the walkers.

“Dammit,” Daryl curses, bringing his bow from his back. He takes care of the walkers with ease, enough time granted to him from the distance they are at, but by the time he is able to turn the mare is nowhere to be seen.

…

Near sunset, he brings himself back between the trees to the prison. He finds Rick checking snares just beyond the line of the fence, and makes sure to shake a few branches in warning at his approach. The man begins to reach for his knife but the movement halts when he sees it is Daryl.

“Hey,” Rick says quietly, squinting against the setting sun’s rays. Daryl sees he has his knife strapped to his thigh, but is not wearing his thick black gun belt. He weaves closer, and Rick sets back to checking the thin wires running through the underbrush. Not wanting to leave the man alone without a gun, Daryl keeps him silent company as he stuffs rabbits into the canvas bag slung over his shoulder.

“Saw a horse, earlier,” Daryl starts eventually as they make their way back to the prison. “One from that herd.”

Rick meets his gaze briefly, his stare intense. Daryl licks his lips before continuing. “I know Michonne just left for Fayetteville,” he says, holding a flexible sproutling’s branch out of Rick’s way. The other man passes through this window, ducking around a hanging kudzu vine and putting a hand absently against the mossy side of a mature oak as he lifts his feet over its flood-exposed roots. “So, I won’t ask to leave. I’ll stay, go after ‘em once she gets back.”

Rick pauses here, by the oak. Daryl sees a shadow cross over Rick’s features, dampening them. He feels pricked by this, as though a thorn had sunk into his flesh.

“No,” Rick decides, his voice a low drawl. “You go after them now. It’s too important to let a chance slip by.” The man looks up into the oak’s canopy, eyes squinted. “Havin’ horses could change how we do runs, let us ease up off cars and gas. We been sayin’ that a long time.”

Daryl cannot say he doesn’t agree with the other man, but finds it impossible to sit easy with the decision. He was gone in Tallahassee just four days and saw the wear Rick underwent, suffered through. So, he takes Rick’s upper arm gently in his grasp, accidentally knocking the bag full of rabbits from his shoulder. They land with a thump against the oak’s roots, and the other man turns to face him. The stare they share is hard, made so by what happened yesterday in the showers. But Daryl does not back down.

“You sure, Rick?”

Those blue eyes are lit from within, from without, as shadows of leaves dapple over Rick’s gentle brow. The sun is strong this evening, golden, pure, and Rick’s dark olive skin shines with a thin layer of sweat, highlighted around the cheekbone and nose bridge.

Rick’s arm shoots out to grab him at the waist, tanned hands reaching for him. He is placing a single palm firmly against Daryl’s lower back, bringing him in for a sudden, rough kiss. Surprised, Daryl feels his lungs tremble against his ribcage as Rick’s mouth moves to cover his own. Winding his first two left fingers carefully into the hair at Rick’s temple, Daryl closes his eyes to the deep green world around them, allowing his vision to darken and senses to narrow into just the feeling of Rick’s mouth on his own, Rick’s breath, panning slowly out from his nose, against his cheek, the rich movement of Rick’s tongue against his tongue. The man’s warm saliva in his mouth.

He rakes his fingers to grasp Rick’s hair at the nape of his neck, pushing Rick’s spine against the mossy oak’s trunk with some measure of force. Rick hits the bark with a soft exhale, and the kiss deepens. Rick is abruptly wanton at this show of dominance, pressing his hips upward. Daryl, all too keen that this could end at any second, pulls Rick’s body roughly to him, presses back, unable to control his hips’ shallow bucking. He feels himself grow hard against the worn denim of his jeans, against Rick’s own hardness.

The question is on the tip of his tongue, his tongue that is currently in Rick’s mouth. He wants to ask it, wants to ask Rick for permission for his wandering right hand’s path underneath his shirt, its slow, taunting fall to Rick’s slim leather belt holding his black denim up around his rearing hips. He wants to ask it of the other man like he wants to take his next breath of air—wants to be inside Rick. Wants to ask Rick if he can be inside him, here, now, in the privacy of the viridescent forest next to the prison. Next to their home.

Then Rick is pushing him away, taking ragged breaths in through his kiss-reddened mouth from the distance of one taut arm, extended.

“Daryl,” Rick warns, “it’s not safe.”

Daryl finds himself ripping away from the other man’s fingertips, running his hand over his lips as he searches the perimeter. They are alone.

_Three times._

He shoots a look over his shoulder at Rick who is still there against the oak.

“Neither’s not havin’ a gun out here,” he replies, almost spitting the words. “You askin’ to get killed?”

Rick’s mouth bends into a frown. “Stop it. I can’t do this, not with you, Daryl.”

Daryl snorts, letting out a short, sarcastic laugh. “Sure, Rick. But then you gonna tell me you’re still here, again?” he says, his voice tense—tenser than he means it to be. “Say, ‘Jus’ wait a little while longer, Daryl’? Meanwhile you’re lookin’ at me like you do, touchin’ me every chance you can get, tellin’ me in so many words you care like I care but never really followin’ through?” He bites his thumb’s nail, waiting for Rick’s response. But Rick has no response. “Huh? What’s it gonna be this time?”

Rick’s brow knits with a delicate, weary sadness. The man raises an arm, extends his fingers toward Daryl as if he is beckoning for the man to come back to him. But Daryl does not, cannot trust it again. An abrupt fury rages, invisible, inside him, some kind of knee-jerk, self-preservationist violence. And all at once he reminds himself of who he once was—this thought sickening to the point of nausea.

Not trusting even himself, Daryl stalks off into the forest and leaves Rick speechless against the oak.

…

In the morning, another Council meeting is convening as Daryl slips past the curtain into Rick’s room. He leaves the mp3 player on the surface of the man’s neatly made sheets, the charging cable coiled off to the side. He had thought about the presence of a note—but cannot manage to find words correct enough to portray accurately how he is feeling, in this moment. So, he leaves it like that.

This time it is Daryl driving the truck, a shining silver horse trailer from a nearby seed-and-feed attached to the hitch. No one rides shotgun—he chose to do this alone. It is early morning, and the sun is soft and bright near the horizon of the sky. A dry grime is kicked up by the vehicle, trailing behind. What was once marshy road has been beaten into a fine, lung-coating dust by the sun’s unforgiving rays.

It is summer in Georgia, officially. The skin of Daryl’s forearm bakes where he hangs it out the open window, turning his arm hair almost blonde in the sunlight.

Daryl pulls off not too far down the road from where he had last spotted the mare. He hops down from the truck, squinting against the sun, before opening the horse trailer. He extracts a length of rope with a breakaway, a bridle, and a bundle of garden-grown carrots Carol had tied together for him with some twine. These things he slings over his shoulder, making sure they do not tangle in his crossbow, then heads out into the thick vegetation of the woods.

He brings himself to the pond once more, finds the bodies of the walkers he had felled in the same place he had left them. He circles to the other side of the body of water, back to the willow tree, and waits in its shade. If this is where they are drinking, it is a good a place as any to stay.

Almost an hour passes this way, the sun raising higher in the sky. Then Daryl is rewarded for his patience: the chestnut mare approaches once more, just like she had the day prior.

He mirrors his movements from less than twenty-four hours ago, approaching at an angle, cautious, waiting when her head raises. Eventually he gets within ten feet of her, reaching slowly up to the breakaway rope to bend it into a lasso. She whickers and raises a hoof but does not move away from him. She’s almost bending forward, curious, as he moves toward her, runs the surface of the rope across the side of her neck as to acclimate her to the texture of it. In his other hand he brings forth a carrot from the bundle, tearing it at the green leaves, to proffer up as he continues to work the rope with his right. She gently takes the carrot into her mouth, and as she chews, he takes the opportunity to slip the lasso around her head. She breathes heavily, surprised, but only swishes her tail with the anxiety of the situation. He pulls another carrot from the bundle and starts to direct her with it, holding it just out of her reach, walking her like this toward the edge of the forest, back toward the truck and trailer.

It's an incredibly slow journey, and every twig snap beneath his careful feet puts her on high alert. He is murmuring to her the whole way, rope held tight in his hand and loose upon her neck. If she bolts, the rope being a breakaway, he will lose her and be left with an empty lasso.

They are halfway back to the truck an hour later, and Daryl decides to sit and rest with her. He affixes the rope around a nearby, sturdy trunk, and finally lets her take the carrot he had been leading her with. Her strong teeth chomp down on the orange flesh and she lets him pet her right above her twitching nostrils, even pushing up into the touch.

“You like me alright, huh, girl?” he murmurs to her. “I’m gonna bring you back to a place where you can have all’a these you want. How’s that sound?”

When they are ready to continue a few minutes later, after Daryl has swallowed half a bottle of water and shoved some jerky past his lips, he moves to untie the rope from around the tree. She looks out of the side of her eye as he approaches, then lowers her head against his touch. He studies her body language and decides he can risk attempting to mount her. She is behaving like a barely wild thing, and was probably once kept very well, learned in a wide range of trained behaviors. The knowledge comes to him as an instinct shared between himself and the animal, the trust built up over the chance encounters. So, he moves his hand down to her side, her back, and steps on top of a tall, felled trunk to adequately sidle onto her spine.

She whinnies lowly, backing up a pace, and Daryl fears for a moment that she might try to buck him off. But she settles as he tightens up slightly on the lasso, guiding her into a walk with subtle pulls on the lead.

They walk like this for over twenty minutes. In a smaller clearing Daryl thinks he hears something not caused by the lifting of her hooves through the brush, and quite suddenly turns to find a tan male, just a bit bigger than the chestnut mare, sidle up beside them and fall into pace. Daryl takes care to stay the course, easy and slow, looking at the male out of the corner of his eye. He thinks he is from the same herd—or, at least, familiar with the mare. He walks so close that his huffing side brushes Daryl’s calf, his knee, and Daryl thinks that he may be able to reach over and bridle the beast, wind the lasso rope through this and guide them both into the back of the horse trailer.

Daryl leans forward on the mare, testing her comfort with his body weight shifting so much. His nose is close to her reddish mane, and the smell of her is animalic and comforting. He reaches over hesitantly, brushing the back of his fingers against the male’s neck. His hair is coarser, but he does not shy from the touch.

Pulling the lead, Daryl urges the mare to quicken her pace. He maneuvers them a bit in front of the male, taking from his shoulder the bridle, running this, too, over his neck to get him used to the feeling of it. He lets Daryl slip it over his snout before he breaks away softly, putting some distance between them. Daryl gives it a minute, and sees that they are within five minutes of the truck and trailer.

He eventually comes back, as Daryl dangles a carrot out for him. He tries the bridle again, and this time it slips easily over the male’s head. Daryl makes quick work of snapping it, threading the rope. The mare almost senses his needs, trusting, ensuring that her friend is also put into his care.

They do not seem to mind the dimness of the horse trailer. Daryl ties them up them inside, gives them the last of the carrots, and sets to shutting the door softly, securing it. Their eyes loom, shining, in the darkness seen through the small slats of the trailer. Only now does Daryl allow himself a small, proud smile.

It is sunset by the time Daryl leads the animals into the half stable Rick had finished work on, putting out feed and water for the night. The yard is empty at twilight, and he runs into no one while parking the truck and trailer back into position. He thinks about the many things they will need for the horses’ care—some already collected in the hopes they would one day have a purpose—but Daryl thinks it will be easy enough with the seed-and-feed being so close. He says goodnight to them with soft pats, making his way back into the prison for, hopefully, some of Carol or Mrs. S’s dinner.

“Horses?” The voice is Maggie’s, calling down from the watchtower as he passes. “Two horses?”

Daryl cranes his neck up at the structure. “Yeah.” He hears her laugh happily, but cannot see her face. Just the tip of her gun, catching the last of the sunlight and beginning of the moonlight.

“Good job, Daryl.”

* * *

Cell block C is filled with Judith’s echoey cries.

Daryl is walking as quietly as he can past Rick’s doorway when he hears a sharp hunting whistle. It is buried there, between the baby’s cries, but definitively Rick’s. Their shared sound: It has been weeks since he last heard it, and months since Rick had left the prison for a run, or for any reason.

Daryl takes in a deep breath and holds it, brings himself back to the concrete jamb.

From his bed, Rick’s blue eyes look up at him. They are shadowed and soft. He is holding Judith against his shoulder, rubbing her back in small circles as she wails.

“You leave that for me?” The man tilts his chin toward the shelf opposite, where the mp3 player sits. Daryl finds it hard to meet the man’s eyes, so he crosses his arms over his chest, nods, clears his throat.

“It yours?”

Daryl shakes his head. “Found it on a run.”

“Why give it to me?”

Daryl sighs with some dampened irritation. He brings his eyes up from the floor but still does not meet Rick’s gaze, instead staring at the opposite side of the doorway, the imperfections in the concrete suddenly incredibly interesting. He picks at a small divot with his fingernail, not answering.

“Well, whatever the reason, it’s helped.” Rick moves to stand, giving Judith little bounces in addition to his soothing circles, and her wail lessens a bit, just for a moment. Rick is crossing the few steps between them, continuing: “Helped me sleep, for a second. Got some real hick tunes on it, too,” he chuckles, the sound filled with a certain sadness.

Daryl looks from the corner of his eye as Rick’s form enters his personal space. The man is leaning forward to press his lips against the edge of his mouth briefly, gently.

“Thank you,” Rick murmurs. Daryl swallows, unfamiliar with this kind of ordinary tenderness.

“Sure,” he replies, but he dares not move toward the other man. He is still too ashamed of what happened in the forest, earlier, and not keen on repeating another refusal of his affection. No matter how much he wants to take Rick’s face into his hands and kiss back just as gently, feel forgiveness this way.

“Look,” Rick starts, taking a few steps back into his cell. “Judith has been colicky all day. Would you help me with her? She likes you, sometimes more than me.”

Daryl looks from Rick’s earnest, tired face to the baby girl spluttering against him. He places a steady hand on the edge of Judith’s crib, finally entering the room, leaning to the side to take in her red, tear-stained face poking over from Rick’s shoulder.

“Of course,” he murmurs, returning his eyes to Rick’s gaze. The soft moment that passes between them is something Daryl wants to wrap around himself as one wraps a burn in a bandage of aloe, some kind of salve to ease the pain.

He shifts to take Judith from Rick, into his arms, placing the cool back of his hand against her forehead. He lifts her, tucks her face into his neck, bounces her as he rubs his thumb comfortingly across her tiny back. Rick watches him do this with reassurance lifting his fatigued features. Judith’s baleful wails turn into low howls, then into some fragile sort of sniffling as the minutes tick by. By the time she has quieted completely, fallen asleep against Daryl, Rick has leaned wearily into the straight frame of his bunk, eyes heavily lidded.

Eventually Daryl takes the risk of setting her down. He bends to lay Judith into the fresh blankets of her crib, and watches haltingly as sleep continues to lull her. He gently wipes some tears and snot from her soft face with his thumb, then turns his attention back to Rick, who is gripping onto the upper bunk’s rail with a white-knuckled hand.

“Brother,” Daryl starts, voice barely a breath, “you gotta sleep or somethin’.”

For once, Rick does not fight him on this. The man merely nods, letting his hands fall from the bedframe to begin undoing his flannel. His fingers skitter over its buttons, until he can pull the garment off each shoulder, each arm. The scar from Morgan’s knife is a pale crescent against his tanned skin.

As Rick moves to peel his jeans from his hips, revealing the dark line of hair that leads down below his zipper, baring himself entire, Daryl turns away and takes it upon himself to blow out the few candles lit there in the room. The sun had long ago set, and there are no longer dancing flames illuminating the cell, nor throwing tall shadows against its walls. Just the moon somewhere outside the barred windows, reflecting light.

In the heat of the room, Daryl can hear Rick slip under one thin sheet on his mattress with a low sound of ache taking leave from the body. Chalking this up to a good a time as any to exit, Daryl decides to leave. He is turning to do so when a hand shoots out of the dark, arrests his wrists and movements alike.

“Stay.”

The word is an apology, a whispered supplication in the cool blue moonlight illuminating the room. Daryl stares down at the man in the dimness of the cell, watching those shining eyes search his own. Then he is turning to pull the curtain over the cell doorway, giving them privacy, as ordinary as anything—as if he had done so a hundred times before.

He feels quiet, feels a deep reserve inside him of peace, silence. It is so different to how he felt during their conversation in the forest. Harboring this safety, it is easy to remove his shoes, his jeans, his vest—easy to join Rick on his narrow mattress, sidle sideways between Rick and the wall to press his chest against the other man’s back in a familiar, sleeping embrace.

They are, once more, bare against the other, supine in the heat of the night. Daryl snakes his arm, his good hand, above Rick’s abdomen to pull the man flush to his chest. Rick’s chest rattles with a quiet sigh, and the other man settles into the movement, reaching to grasp Daryl’s fingers with his own.

This is unfamiliar territory between the two of them, but it is something Daryl has dreamed of, yearned for. Something he has thought about frequently while in his own bunk, just above where they lay now, separated by feet of concrete. What would it be like to sleep next to Rick, be surrounded by Rick’s things in Rick’s room? How would it be if he could roll over in the middle of the night and find the man there, so willing even in unconsciousness to press into his body, partake in the comfort he wants so badly to provide?

Rick brings Daryl’s hand up to his mouth, kissing, sleepily, his knuckles. “This okay?” the other man asks, voice barely a whisper, and Daryl finds himself pressing a lingering kiss behind the shell of Rick’s ear in response. Squeezing the fingers splayed between his own.

“Yeah,” he answers honestly, pressing into Rick’s curls with his nose. “It is.”

They fall asleep like this, lost together to unconsciousness for a few hours. Deeper in the night, Daryl finds himself blinking against inky blackness, illuminated only by the full June moon filtering through the privacy curtain: finds himself stirring, sweating, with his sleep-hard cock arching against Rick’s lower back.

For a few long minutes Daryl does nothing but listen to Rick breathing, aware that their fingers are still loosely intertwined against Rick’s chest. Beyond the room, all of cell block C is quiet: the whole prison seemingly asleep.

Shifting, Daryl presses a wet kiss at the crux of Rick’s neck from behind. He lingers for a moment, nibbling this bit of flesh, before laving his tongue out against other man’s sweat-salty skin. He follows this with another firm kiss, breathing in deeply the other man’s scent, his perspiration-damp hair. His cock twitches and he presses his eyelids tightly together, hopes for something that he is not sure will come to pass. Not just tonight—but never. The thought of this makes a heavy lump in his throat despite—or maybe because of—how much he has wanted this moment. Of having Rick warm in his arms upon waking.

Unexpectedly, the other man stirs inside those arms. Awake or asleep, Daryl is unsure. He waits, breath bated, not wishing to disturb him further if the man is indeed asleep. Then Rick is lazily lifting his hand up to his mouth again, running his lips and stubble over Daryl’s knuckles with a low, sleepy exhale. Then he untangles his fingers, and with a slight, leonine stretch reaches behind him, slim digits sliding between their frames, to bring Daryl’s hardness into his palm in one sure motion.

A sigh passes through Daryl’s whole body and he shivers, angling his hips closer to the hot touch. He lays his forehead against Rick’s shoulder, suppresses a groan. Then Rick’s hand is leaving his length, picking up Daryl’s hand from where it is splayed against the sheet, to move it to the turgid heat at the crux of Rick’s own sinewy thighs. Daryl discovers he’s hard. Rick is yearning for an inch of pleasure, Daryl realizes; the whole animal body of him acutely attuned and aware of another in its presence, wanting—wanting, deeply.

Rick continues where he had left off, and Daryl picks up a rhythm of his own around Rick’s shaft. With the permission granted to him, he uses his skilled fingers to bring forth a shaking moan from Rick’s throat. Rick turns his head, trying to get a grip of what is happening to his body. Daryl takes the mouth, there, onto his own—kisses deeply with tongue. Rick moves his body cyclically in order to connect the kiss, in order to bite his bottom lip sharply. As Rick is once again pressed to his front, Daryl feels the pain of this hit with an erotic intensity. But Rick is holding him off, keeping him a few inches from his face, just enough to meet his eyes in the light of the moon. They are both breathing raggedly, and Daryl’s hand is still on Rick’s cock.

“You fuckin’ terrify me,” Rick breathes, fear and pleasure blurring on his beautiful face. “How much I want you, fuckin’ terrifies me.”

Daryl licks the scant blood risen to the surface of his lip, unsure how to respond to this. He presses his forehead to Rick’s, moving to take his hand from the man’s pre-cum slicked piece. But Rick’s other hand comes down, holds his there, stops it from leaving.

“It’s me, Rick,” Daryl murmurs, acutely reminded of the mare’s initial skittishness and the care with which he had to make his movements slow. “Remember? Just me.”

He feels Rick nod fervently against him, hand still keeping his own hand pressed to his cock, and hears him exhale past a pleasured whimper as Daryl starts moving his slick fingers once more.

“You trust me?” Daryl asks, quickening his grip around Rick’s erection as he watches the other man unfurl at the seams. The hand keeping him at bay loses some of its strength, and Daryl presses closer to Rick’s heat.

“Mm-hm,” Rick manages, his Adam’s apple bobbing wildly beneath his beard as his head lulls back in pleasure. “I trust you, I—” Rick moans quietly and pushes his hips toward Daryl’s hand. “I trust—you.”

So, Daryl takes Rick’s two hands in his own, pressing the lithe arms connecting them up against Rick’s pillow—firmly holding them hostage despite his two bandaged fingers. He lays himself against, stretches against Rick’s form on its back. He makes himself a long line to encapsulate accurately Rick’s guarded longing, to meet it accurately with his own. As he lowers his hips onto Rick’s, he feels their cocks brush against one another’s in one riling, thrilling moment. Setting a slow rhythm, Daryl bucks now, deeply, singularly: He pulses his arousal into Rick’s with a measured ardor, mimicking how he would move were he slipped inside of the other man.

And Rick is soon suffocating his moans against Daryl’s sweat-slick neck.

“Can I—” Daryl starts in the dim heat of this moment, filled with their combined lust. “Rick, I want—”

“I know,” Rick responds tersely, his voice a single stretched cable that is at its limit. He pushes back eagerly into Daryl’s hips, giving him everything he has got with his wracked body. “Fuck me, Daryl. Make me—” Rick lets out a shaky sigh. “Please.”

Daryl presses his fingertips against Rick’s open mouth. They slip inside, invited, and are made wet by Rick’s hot, snaking tongue, his sucking cheeks. Daryl withdraws them after a moment to move his hand between their heat-sealed bodies, pressing, teasing his fingers into the tight ring of muscle of Rick’s asshole. As Daryl adheres their mouths in a deep kiss, the man moans against his mouth, wild and unabashed. He roils at the arousal that bursts through his body at this sound.

He presses his fingers further, curling them upward. Rick’s palm slides up his spine to his shoulder blade, grasping, and opening his thighs to allow Daryl’s digits deeper. It is enough, he thinks, enough to be so wound up into the other man that he can no longer tell where the outlines of his body exist, nor where Rick starts. Just knows that everything feels good here, every taut muscle’s movement brings him closer to Rick.

Nothing else exists outside of this.

Aching, he withdraws his fingers to spit on them, slicken the straining head of his own arousal. He pushes Rick’s thigh to the side, running his hand reverently over the skin there as he meets the man’s heavily lidded gaze. “Tell me if it’s too much,” he breathes, brushing his lubed tip against Rick’s partially stretched hole. Rick nods, and Daryl looks down briefly to align this first shallow thrust—but returns his eyes to carefully monitor the other man’s expression, to memorize it, as he finally enters just a few inches into Rick’s tight heat.

Rick’s brow knits at the same moment his stomach tautens, ribbed plane of muscle becoming stark. A vein jumps in his neck at the effort of keeping himself quiet, and Daryl lazily moves his hips in a small circle before withdrawing an inch, pushing back in a bit further each time. He squeezes Rick’s inner thigh, digging his short nails in, as a slow smirk spreads across his features. He rocks his hips in this torturously paced rhythm, watches Rick become wholly enraptured by the pleasure he is creating in him.

“You like that?” he growls. “My cock in you?”

Rick can’t seem to form a coherent response, and just arches his lower back impatiently as he nods, over and over. He’s panting, now, lips parted to allow his soft breath to enter and exit into the thin air between them.

“You’re eager,” Daryl praises lowly. He keeps the same slow pace, making sure Rick feels every bit of him slide inside. He spits again on his fingers, wetting further up his shaft as he slips another inch in. “Tell me how to make you feel good.”

Rick reaches up to his neck and he bends at this beckoning, meeting the man’s lips in a kiss that sinks a low groan into the center of him. He pushes in deeper, moving his fingers to keep Rick’s cheek spread for him, feels himself throb at the tightness this deep in Rick’s hole.

“You’re already makin’ me feel good,” the man breathes against his lips as the kiss parts. “You’re so fuckin’ big.”

“Not hurtin’ you, am I?”

Rick shakes his head, closing his eyes to swallow, focus. Daryl runs the pad of his thumb over the man’s lower lip, taking him in in this moment. Better than dreams—real, warm, writhing. A jolt of pleasure shoots straight through him, at Rick allowing him to witness him like this.

Daryl is only halfway in when he lowers himself closer, covers Rick, bracing his weight against the flat edge of his forearms on either side of Rick’s head. He tangles his fingers in the man’s hair, leaning down to take his mouth in another heated kiss. He’s running his thumb over Rick’s stubbled cheek, tongue deep into the heat of his mouth, when he flicks his hips deeper, sinking in the last half of his length until he’s buried to the hilt. Rick constricts around him, and he is controlling Rick’s arching throat, staying the man’s mouth against his. Rick is whimpering, and Daryl is pressing up, up still, almost vicious—the weight of him pinning Rick to his mattress.

“Yes,” Rick hisses, a sob caught in the back of his throat. He’s hooking his thigh around Daryl’s hip as he draws out, delves in again deeply. “Yes, Daryl—”

“You take it so good, darlin’. Fuck.”

He runs his hand down the length of Rick’s side, thumbing the sweating skin before he reaches between their bodies to take Rick’s cock in his palm once more. He teases it, trying to match the rhythm of his hips to the rhythm of his hand. Rick shudders, and Daryl feels the tight hole around him relax a little, open with pleasure, making it easier for him to glide in and out, angle toward finding the spot he thinks will make Rick see stars.

“I wanted you like this, for so fuckin’ long,” Daryl breathes into Rick’s ear, kissing wetly into the shell as he sticks his tongue in. “You feel so good, Rick.”

Rick, blindly searching, arrests Daryl’s lips in another kiss. It is then that Daryl brushes the spot deep inside him, and a single, low moan exits Rick’s open mouth, pans out against his lips.

“Right there?” Daryl asks. Rick’s eyes are closed to the feeling of it, savoring it, and the man nods. Daryl reaches for it again and again, his hips’ plunging picking up speed. Rick constricts around him and Daryl groans sharply, an undeniable, tingling warmth pooling in his hips. He fucks up into Rick with abandon, chasing the feeling, feeling it build to a point of blinding ecstasy. He knows he is close, knows Rick is close—the man impossibly tight now, and bucking erratically to meet him, make him thrust as deep as possible.

“Don’t stop, Daryl,” Rick whispers into his neck, voice caught in his throat. “You’re gonna make me cum—”

“I’m real close, too, darlin’,” Daryl murmurs back, brushing a hand through Rick’s haphazard curls to better see the man’s face. “Can I cum inside you?”

Rick’s eyes are on fire, that gaze locked on his own. He nods vigorously. “Yes,” he says, and it sounds almost like a desperate, _Please_.

They lock lips again, and this kiss is lilting, gentle, despite the ferocity with which Daryl is delving into Rick’s hole. It has reverence in its movement, neediness. Daryl never wants it to stop.

Then Rick is impossibly tight. The other man’s limbs are shaking, his thigh like steel over Daryl’s hip. Those blue eyes are rolling back, and that cock is spasming in his hand. He feels the stickiness of Rick’s seed coat the webbing of his palm as he shudders, and in quick succession he finds his depthless release inside the other man. He bites his bottom lip with the intensity of the orgasm, dipping his forehead against Rick’s collarbone as he desperately pumps up, filling the man’s hole with his cum.

Afterward, all is still. Daryl does not move from on top of Rick, taking some of his weight back against his own arms, bracing, but not unsheathing himself from the other man. Rick’s hand is gripped around his upper arm, soft, the thumb brushing absently as they collect their breath against one another and the aftershocks of pleasure ring in their ears.

Then Rick is stirring, kissing him. Daryl kisses back, meets the gentle lips that take his own, the slow tongue that laves inside his mouth. He closes his eyes. He feels like he could fall asleep like this, still inside the other man. But Rick is squirming slightly, breaking the kiss, so he reaches down to pull himself free to allow a more comfortable position on the mattress for them both, dropping heavily to its surface.

“You good?” he asks Rick, voice gruff but full of earnest. They are still touching one another in slight ways, though not wrapped up as they had once been. He looks over in the dimness and realizes Rick is covering his face with both his palms, his elbows stark angles in the air above him.

“Hey,” Daryl says, concerned at this sight. He brings his injured hand up to brush over Rick’s elbow, but the man will not move his hands from his face. He is breathing shallowly, individual ribs defined in the side of him.

“Why me?” comes the quiet voice. “Why me, Daryl?”

Daryl finds himself unable to answer this. He cannot fathom the emotions running through the other man at this moment—the first time, as far as he knows, that he’s let himself be intimate with someone other than his wife in years. And to have done so in the very place where she died. Daryl sighs sympathetically.

“You’re a good man, Rick. Why not you?”

Rick finally looks at him. “It’s more to you,” he says. “I know it’s more. You’re gonna realize that, and then—”

Daryl breathes in, holds it. He chews his cheek. “C’mere.” Rick turns into his open arm, burying himself in the embrace. He feels his neck dampen from where Rick has pressed his face, feels the man’s hot breath exit against his skin.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, alright?” He runs his fingers through Rick’s hair. “Nothing’s changed, even if we never do that again.” Daryl presses his lips to the crown of Rick’s head, takes a long breath of the other man’s scent into his nose. He closes his eyes. “It’ll be enough, jus’ bein’ however we are. However you wanna be.”

He says the words but there is a heaviness in his chest akin to sorrow. It is all at once overwhelming and sobering, and he feels his eyes bitten by tears that he must quickly blink back. He takes that, buries that feeling within him now. With Rick, warm and woven to him, he makes something like a promise to himself. He makes a decision based on survival.

Eventually he feels Rick once more asleep against him, the man’s breath softly entering and exiting his nose. Daryl holds him, lying still, awake, until he can see the dawn sun begin to brighten the room.

Then the privacy curtain makes a slight sound, the whisper of fabric running against itself. Daryl looks up at it and sees Beth halfway into the room. She is reaching into Judith’s crib, her movement abruptly arrested by the eye contact Daryl makes with her now. This lasts for one long second, and then Beth is withdrawing her gaze from the sight of he and Rick prone under the sheet, their clothing piled on the floor, as she continues to bend, scooping Judith into her arms. She leaves without so much as a word, the curtain fluttering closed once more behind her.

Daryl looks up at the bottom of the top bunk, something like panic settling over him. Then he closes his eyes, swallows this worry. Beth doesn’t care—her even look said as much. Unshocked, understanding.

Plus, there are bigger things, more important things, Daryl thinks. Like the moment, inevitable, when Rick will stir against him, and, waking, will be forced to break this dream with words.


	5. For as Long as The Smoke Lasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Rick POV this chapter.

Rick is woken deep into the morning by the sound of motion through the cell block. He brings a hand to his face and wipes away sleep, with acute alarm going through him at being in bed so late. His body knows this, and he feels unfamiliar with the restfulness settling heavily in his limbs. He cannot remember the last time he did not wake before dawn.

He brings his hand down from his face, and it brushes the cool surface of his mattress. He looks over. Daryl is gone.

Rick dresses in his farming clothes, mind already focusing on running through the litany of duties in the yard he must do—the piglets (not so small, anymore), the container plants, the crops mired into the earth. The walkers and the way they have been bunching up against the fence, straining it, threatening its integrity.

Then, beyond that, Carl and the unforgettable decision with that Woodbury boy—keeping Carl occupied, away from the harsh realities of this world for just a little while, backpedaling, while he can. Then, Judith and her health of tantamount importance—at so young an age that anything could mean her death against such an underdeveloped immune system. And the elderly and their concerns.

The need for more things, always, and a way to keep track of it all. A way to find it all. A way to provide.

These things, this list, flows through his mind like an unending mobius strip as he straps his belt through the loops of his jeans. He gives a sideways look at his gun belt, hanging there in the corner of the cell. He closes his eyes briefly against the bright, late morning sun.

He can smell Daryl, here. Smell the man on him, around him.

Without a second look at the gun belt, he leaves his room quickly.

…

He enters the kitchen, hoping to find something left over from breakfast. There is no one there—at the awkward, empty moment before lunch prep begins. The clock on the wall reads 10:14. Rick winds his watch before ducking into some cabinets, moving some sundries around, searching.

“Want some of this?”

Rick looks up from where he is crouched against the tiled floor. Michonne stands above him, smiling, holding out a candy bar. He stares at her.

“Thought you were goin’ to Fayetteville,” he says lightly, moving to stand. She shrugs.

“Car broke down, then it started raining. Didn’t feel like it after that.”

Rick studies her face, indeterminable. Something else had happened but he does not know what—bad enough that she would be so deterred. He knows he will not get it out of her, and so does not even attempt to.

“Saw we have horses, though. Won’t need to worry about cars so much now.”

Rick tils his head quizzically. “Sorry, what?”

“Horses,” Michonne says, opening the candy bar packaging. She tears off a small chunk, puts it in her mouth, and shoves the rest into Rick’s unready hands. Her slim hand covers her mouth as she chews. “You didn’t know?”

“Daryl said he was gonna—” Rick stops. “How many?”

“Two,” Michonne replies, swallowing. She leans easily against the brushed metal counter. “You should go and see them. They’re beautiful. The mare seems to take to people real well.”

Rick begins to move off at her suggestion, then brings a hand to her shoulder. “Glad you’re okay,” he says, seriously, passing the candy bar gently back into her hands. She nods at him, looking eager to leave whatever experience she had, behind.

Out in the yard, Rick passes patrols and others on their way to, or in the middle of, their own tasks. Some of the elderly are with the young, just sitting in the sun, enjoying it. On the far end there is a group tending to laundry—hanging it up to dry.

Rick walks past all these with small greetings, making a slow beeline for the stable. As he approaches, it is Daryl who ducks out from underneath the roofed portion, carrying with him a bucket of water and a large yellow auto sponge. He squints his eyes against the sun, meeting Rick’s gaze.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

The voice is gruff yet gentle, and Rick has to suppress a shiver that runs through him that reveals how much he likes it. It is like the man’s timbre has a mainline to his gut.

He moves his eyes from Daryl to the horses, studying them for a moment.

“When did this happen?”

Daryl shrugs, wetting the sponge in the bucket, squeezing it in his hand to absorb the clear rainwater. Rick can see that he is bathing the horses, and that they are enjoying the shade-cooled water in the approaching heat of the day.

“Yesterday.” The musculature of Daryl’s upper arm jumps, flexes, as he puts slight pressure against the sides of the beasts in his ministrations. He is wearing his vest, and a shirt without sleeves, its buttons undone to reveal half his chest against the heat of the day. The animals are calm under his steady hands. Rick sees that his bandaged fingers had been newly cared for, wrapped, only to get wet again.

“And you didn’t tell me?” He is not angry, just nonplussed.

“Kinda busy, weren’t you?” That squint lends the face an unassuming roguishness, and Rick finds himself stirring slightly at the memory of the dark morning, as if a breeze had just blown over the pasture. The grey-tan male Daryl bathes whips his tail back and forth, whickering slightly as he sets his eye on Rick.

“Daryl—” he tries, but Rick is at a loss for words. This does not change the other man’s body language in the slightest, continuing to go about his task with an easy surety. Rick starts to approach, knowing he has a look in his eyes, but Daryl steps back slightly, seeing this.

“Better not,” he says, casting a long gaze over Rick’s shoulder at the groups ambling about in the yard.

“I don’t care,” Rick murmurs, his fingers grasping the tall wooden fence around the enclosure. “Do you?”

Daryl stares at him but does not say anything. Rick gets the feeling that this hesitancy is somehow about something else, other than having a possible audience. A few tense moments pass.

“Say hello to the horses, Rick,” Daryl eventually says, turning back to his hands’ work. He bends, dips the sponge again in the bucket, and backs away. “Let ‘em get used to you.”

Rick considers for a moment pushing the issue, but can see the wall built behind Daryl’s expression. He lets out a breath, hopping the fence easily, sure to make his movements practical and soft as to not scare the beasts. Their heads loom over him as he approaches slowly, the back of his hand held out against, first, the grey male’s nose.

“That’s right,” Daryl murmurs as he approaches. “You can probably touch him, he sees ya. It’s alright, boy.”

Rick places his palm flat against the neck of the horse, its wet coat already hot in the sun.

“Both your hands, now,” Daryl softly directs him.

Rick presses his other hand there, making slight stroking motions. The male is staring, sides heaving with his heavy breath, but Daryl’s presence seems to calm him. He feels the other man come up behind him, cover his left hand with his own injured one. “Like this,” that low voice speaks, directly next to the shell of his ear, and Rick has to consciously demand that his knees not bend. He feels funny, still, from the unusual excess of sleep, and the fact he has not yet eaten.

But he brings his eyes from the beast, lifting them to Daryl’s face, allowing Daryl to guide his hand. He sinks toward the man, his radiating heat, his scent.

“I wanna kiss you,” Rick breathes, unable to suppress it. “Can I?”

He can see Daryl swallow hard. The man shifts slightly, looking back at the dark half-shed on the left side of the enclosure. He backs away a bit, turns his back on Rick, walking into the private dimness there. Rick pats the male gently, then follows.

The wood of the support beam is rough under his palm as he ducks in under the low roof. Daryl has turned to face him, his eyes shining in the low light that comes through the cracks between planks in the three walls. Rick approaches slowly, running his fingertips over the various tools, ropes, and bridles hanging, waiting to be used. He can feel his heart pounding in the hollow of his throat.

“What made you change your mind?” Rick demurs as he gets within a few inches of the man, nuzzling his nose into the edge of his jaw.

Daryl shifts quizzically. “ _My_ mind?” he asks. “You were the one sayin’ all’a that stuff, last night.”

Rick kisses Daryl’s throat, pressing his lips against the beads of sweat forming there. Feels the vibration of that voice exiting.

“But I never said to _stop_ ,” Rick whispers, bringing his palm up to better hold the man to his ministrations.

“Bullshit,” Daryl says. “You’re terrified of me, remember?”

This gives Rick pause. He frowns, pressing the motion once more to Daryl’s skin. Then he nips lightly, laves his tongue out against Daryl’s jugular. The other man growls, and Rick feels him snake his good arm around his waist, pulling him flush to his front.

“Which is it, then?”

Rick breathes out calmly from his nose, shifting against Daryl’s abdomen. The arm around him extends its hand under his flannel, fingers running over his lower back, his spine.

“It does terrify me. Havin’ you,” Rick breathes. “Not havin’ you, too.”

Daryl snorts. Rick can hear the irritation in it but continues—he is neither held closer nor pushed away, the arm slung around him loose. Daryl is waiting, he is thinking. Rick laves his mouth over the blood beating through Daryl’s jugular, wanting to moan, wanting to crawl inside the cavity of the man’s chest so he can feel the vocal chords vibrate against the plane of his palm.

“Fuck you, Rick,” Daryl growls before Rick is grabbed up into his arms, steel in their resolve, and Daryl’s lips crash against his own. The kiss is desperate, deep, controlling. It makes Rick moan.

Daryl is breathing hard, parting from him. “I’m not doin’ this,” the man mutters to himself. He licks Rick’s spit off his bottom lip, gaze boring into Rick’s own. “I can’t keep doin’ this, Rick.” Then something goes soft in those animal eyes, and Rick feels an integral part of himself crumble. “Don’t ask me to keep doin’ this.”

“Hey,” Rick says, serious now. He reaches up to push a lock of hair off of Daryl’s cheek, but the man resists the touch. “Talk to me.”

“I know I haven’t lost you, but it feels like I lost you, man,” he starts, uncharacteristically quick to bring the words to his lips. Daryl’s breathing is erratic and the man is stalking, making little wild movements like something caged. Rick wants to put his hands up, put them against Daryl like he had put them against the horse, to calm him. Rick swallows, makes an effort to keep his mouth closed, to listen, to wait, to hold this space here, now, for the other man.

“It makes more sense out there, when I’m actually away. Then you’re away, too, and I can miss you, I can make missin’ you so much make sense.” Daryl’s voice is harsh and almost manic, edged by something like a barely-held-together will. “But you fuckin’ show up anyway, out there, in every fuckin’ thing.”

Rick finally arrests Daryl’s wild eyes. They stare.

“I think about you all the time, Rick. All the fuckin’ time.”

Rick draws a thin breath in through his nose. He is in his head, puzzling this out, not paying attention to his limbs. His hand moves as if to rest against the holster of his gun belt, but he isn’t wearing it—hasn’t worn it in weeks for fear he would have to use it. The PTSD he’d seen buddies on the force go through—the aversion to any signifier of violence: he feels it shake him like earthquake tremors under the surface, loosening the dirt, collapsing bridges and felling cliff faces. He closes his eyes briefly, as if out of fear, blinks hard.

“At least you can go,” Rick starts. He has to consciously will his throat to swallow the lump there. “Forgotten how many times I puked these past months, just from the thoughts gettin’ so loud in there, the fear. There isn’t anythin’ I’m not scared of in some way, Daryl.”

Daryl brushes his fingers against Rick’s cheek. “I know, man. And I’m here to help you through that. Whatever you need.” Rick can pick out the sympathy in the tone. “You know that, ri’?”

Rick nods. “So, what do you want?” he asks gently, tenuously. He splays his hand against Daryl’s stomach, and the man lowers his hand to hold it there, flesh warm.

“You,” the other man breathes. He moves to take Rick against him again, press their foreheads together. Their breaths mingle in the air between them, and Rick fights the desire to close his eyes. He’s tired, still so tired—and Daryl is safe, always has been.

“I’m not here, brother,” Rick replies, finally. “Not all the time.”

“But I am,” Daryl says, his voice a steady strength. “Not that you owe me—‘cause fuck that, you don’t owe me a thing. But I know you want it, too.” He pauses here, and Rick can feel his jaw jumping. “I’m jus’ saying that what you said last night, that’s bullshit. About me wantin’ it more. Don’t tell me you don’t want it, Rick. You do. Be fuckin’ brave enough to at least tell me that, if you’re gonna beg me to fuck you like I did.” Daryl inhales, holds it. “That’s wasn’t nothin’. That was everythin’.”

Rick feels a jolt go through him, and all of Daryl’s scents—his sweat, the freshness of the collected rainwater, the unwashed sex just below the surface—makes Rick want to bury himself in the other man’s chest like he’s feral. Rick feels himself getting hard.

“You’re right,” Rick murmurs. “You’re right, Daryl. I want you, too.”

Daryl’s eyes go wide, seeing this—not expecting this.

“So, fuck me,” Rick begs again.

Rick’s discarded watch reads 10:42 where it lays, face down, against the concrete surface of his cell floor. Its ticking is muffled, muted by the black jeans and leather vest thrown on top of it.

Somewhere above that, Rick does his best to quiet the deep moans Daryl draws from him. He is laving his tongue past Daryl’s lips, wrapped tightly against Daryl’s naked and sweating skin, and shuddering in pleasure as the man brings him to climax for the second time that day.

…

“You haven’t been going out as much, young man,” Hershel starts, changing the bandage on Daryl’s fingers a few days later. “Maggie told me you’ve asked her to take your place on runs for a bit.”

Daryl hums, wincing as the older man checks the dexterity, straightness of his healing digits. The skin has scarred over but he thinks it’s a long shot that his pinky will ever be able to bend the same again.

“You gonna pull a Rick on us? Get real into plantin’ a pumpkin patch, or something?”

Daryl snorts, and the man’s eyes wrinkle with a small smile. “Nah,” Daryl mutters. “Nothin’ like that. Wouldn’t say no to some pie this fall, though.”

“Wouldn’t that be a miracle?” the other man agrees with a small laugh. He affixes the edge of the bandage around Daryl’s fingers. “You should be able to stop wearin’ splints in a few days. You’re healin’ quickly,” he adds, brushing his fingers against the surface of the table as he moves to stand.

“How’s the peg leg treatin’ you?” Daryl asks as Hershel raises, unaided.

“Oh, just fine. A lot better than those damned crutches. Thought my armpits would never not be purple and bruised.”

Daryl grimaces slightly at this visual. He walks alongside the older man’s slightly irregular gait, trying to find the right words, form them in the correct order, as Hershel puts the roll of gauze back with the rest of the medical supplies.

“Well, spit it out, young man.”

He raises his eyes, surprised. Hershel’s suspenders burgeon a bit over his shirt’s breast pocket, where Milton Mamet’s notebook is tucked. Then, above the fully buttoned and collared shirt, is Hershel’s stern, open expression.

“You don’t care a lick about an old man’s stump. You want to talk about Rick, don’t you?”

Daryl knows what his face looks like, in this moment. He cannot manage to say anything in response, but Hershel does not move, does not let up with that formidable stare.

“He’s—” Daryl starts, suppressing a stammer, suppressing the feeling like he’s narcing and not just speaking to someone trusted out of concern. “He ain’t takin’ a gun out past the fence. I asked him to, but he won’t do it.”

Hershel softens, expression troubled as he searches Daryl’s eyes. “I noticed that. Wasn’t sure if it was all the time, or just a fluke, though.”

“It’s all the time,” Daryl answers smally. He has woken every morning the past week in Rick’s bunk, seen the man dress after sleeping in one luxurious hour after dawn, seen him out after a moment of soft touches, of lips brushing against eyelashes, temples, mouths. But the gun belt remains, collecting dust, hanging in the far corner of the cell. “Will you talk to him?”

Hershel nods soberly, adjusting his suspenders to pull out the notebook and a pen—not fountain, this time. This makes Daryl chuckle despite the seriousness of the situation. Hershel smiles, too, when he realizes what thought must have passed through Daryl’s mind.

Daryl stands close while Hershel writes this down. “There,” the man eventually says. “By order of the Council, non-knife weapons and ammunition must be taken on every outing beyond the fence. I’ll make sure everyone knows.”

Daryl nods and is clapped on the shoulder by the older man. He is given a look, something like knowing, and cannot simply chalk it up to the way Hershel is. There is something there beyond it—something that accepts and understands. Something he had seen in Beth’s gaze that first morning in Rick’s room.

Before this intuition forms a full thought within his mind, Hershel is walking off to his next task.

…

It is after dinner one night when he is helping Rick collect root and vine vegetables from the garden. They use old metal colanders, scarves, bandanas laid out against the soil to roll cucumbers, tomatoes (heirloom and grape), carrots, snap peas, garlic, onions, and potatoes across their surfaces. Daryl is using a knife to cut stalks of kale back from their plumed bunches, the slick swiping sound of his blade adding to the music of the night insects coming out now that the dusk sun is fading. It has been a week since Daryl has been on a run, and though he feels the encroaching presence of the fences day after day, all he has to do is look to Rick to feel settled. Feel still.

He slips his blade back into its sheath, bringing his legs into a crossed position underneath him as he drinks water from a repurposed glass sauce jar nearby. He brings his eyes to Rick’s form, holding a large silver colander underneath grape tomato vines and he pulls the small orange fruits off each bud.

“This is who you are now, huh?” Daryl murmurs after a moment, a slight breeze stirring Rick’s shirt where it is tucked in against his lower back. There are large wet spots from sweat running down his spine, and the man turns obliquely from his task to take Daryl’s gaze in measuredly.

“Hm?” he asks, distractedly inquisitive.

“You look like you been doin’ this your whole life,” Daryl clarifies. “Farmin’.”

Rick rubs his thumb absently over a single grape tomato, popping it in his mouth. He chews and Daryl watches his jaw work at the soft flesh of the fruit, watches the long, lean line of Rick’s body towering over where he kneels.

“Do I?” Rick murmurs back. But Daryl can see that the man is far away, brought somewhere else by his mind in the silent moments here in the empty yard, the cloudy, dim, humid sky. The particular stillness that is present at the end of summer holds itself over the field like a forgetting haze, simultaneously light and oppressive—enough to stop time, create a space between seconds.

“Where are you, man?” Daryl breathes. Rick’s eyes meet his then slide away, and Rick is rubbing a hand against the nape of his neck, other hand on his hip as he shifts, pivots, away.

“Don’t do that,” Daryl continues. “Just talk to me.”

Rick’s back expands with a sigh, deep and shaking. Daryl waits, holds space, reaching for a particularly long blade of grass, its tip sprouting with seeds, which he absently pops against his molars to chew.

“I’m not denyin’ it, Daryl” Rick starts, looking off somewhere into the middle distance of the edge of the forest, past the fence, past the walkers. “But I told you, I’m not all here.”

Daryl braces himself in an imperceptible way. Just a silent shift occurring within his chest. He had been waiting for this moment—in his experience, good things like the last week they’ve shared together don’t just continue on forever. Not for him, or for anyone.

Things waver, things bend. It is no one’s fault.

“You need anythin’?” he replies. Rick shakes his head softly, and silence falls over them once more, between them.

“I’ll be gone, sometimes,” Rick tells him, gaze shifting toward the sky, the overcast dark blue that pulls itself like wool over the landscape. “But I’m not sorry it happened. Not sorry it’s happening.”

Rick’s eyes, not meeting his, are clear as fresh water, and Daryl sees the meaning of these words change like a silvery fish turning against the pull of the stream. “Jus’ wanted you to know that.”

Daryl nods. He chews the piece of grass in his mouth once, then once more. “Okay,” he replies, echoes, because this is all he _can_ say. The survivalist in him long through with effectively compartmentalizing everything that has to do with his feelings for Rick. So, of course, it is okay that he knows this means that, some days, Rick will be far away from him, far away like he is now.

It has to be okay.

Rick bends to silently collect the sheets full of their work of the past hour, tying them together at their four corners into slings like Daryl had shown him how to so long ago. Daryl takes the grass from his mouth as Rick turns to make his way back toward the prison, the harvest slung over his, in the crook of his elbow.

Daryl reaches into his vest pocket, pulls out a cigarette, lights it. He inhales deeply, allowing the nicotine to take over his lungs entire. It is something like being full, he thinks, watching Rick’s form get smaller and darker as he makes his way up the gentle hill of the robust, shadowy garden; watches his outline vanish into the night.

It is something like possession, having and being had, for as long as the smoke lasts.


End file.
